Leah S. Horowitz

Investigates divestment movements, using the example of #DefundDAPL, which targeted private-sector funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), an oil conduit crossing the Missouri River a half-mile from the Standing Rock Reservation. Reveals complex interactions among ideologies, power relations, and policy-making, and demonstrates limits to private-sector initiatives’ ability to impose adequate restrictions on environmentally and socially harmful investment practices. Argues that a triple-helix lens helps unpack the black box of decommodification by revealing complex interactions among ideologies, power relations, and policy-making and demonstrates limits to private-sector initiatives’ ability to impose adequate restrictions on environmentally and socially harmful investment practices.

Studies the controversy over federal regulatory processes regarding the protection of Lakota and Dakota cultural heritage in permitting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Unpacks power differentials and dynamics among these various groups, as realized through particular interpretations and implementations of relevant legislation. Suggests that examining such “conflicts of interests” within and between elite assemblages, within the legal production of space, can elucidate controversies over industrial expansion’s socio-environmental threats.

Examines the power relations that unfold when Indigenous-led struggles invoke settler-colonial law toward protection from industry’s impacts. Builds on Critical Race Theory and posits a ‘triple-helical’ relationship between law, power, and ideology, which coproduce one another, mediated by nudges from individual agents. Concludes with a research agenda for applying the triple-helix framework to Indigenous-led engagements with industry.

Uses an ethnographic study of Kanak women’s engagements with mining in New Caledonia, to examine three questions. Recognizes Indigenous women’s increasing agency in engaging with external actors, such as industrial projects, yet also shows how outsiders can commit retrogradation to further marginalize young, rural, poor community women. Points to a way out of oppression, through the transformation of hegemonic ideologies.

Explores how the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage listing of New Caledonia's reefs contributed to the demise of Rhéébù Nùù, an indigenous activist group that had been targeting a multinational mining project. Determines ultimately, conservation does not only result in the extension of state powers, as the literature has shown; as this study demonstrates, it can surreptitiously support the extension of environmentally damaging industrial development at the expense of grassroots action.

Expands our understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a form of roll-out neoliberalism, building on analyses of CSR initiatives as elements of a capitalist system actively working to create its own social regularisation – to secure a socio-politico-economic context supporting capitalist development. Finds that counter-hegemonic possibilities reside in the perpetual dynamism of cultures.

Examines a dispute over urban wetland management and argues that it is essential to educate the public about the vulnerability, and value, of protected areas and species. Concludes that participants in a public debate may not simply be pursuing self-serving goals, nor might open communication resolve their differences, but instead, each may be deeply convinced that he or she is advocating the most rational and moral course of action.

Investigates stakeholder groups involved in protests over a mining project, and finds that alliances between groups with unequal power further diminish the less powerful group’s ability to achieve its goals. Shows findings also enhance radical geographical understandings of capitalism's infrastructure, as uneven development increasingly relies upon—yet finds it increasingly difficult to achieve—the alignment of local communities’ translations with those of the agents of industry.

Explores villagers’ decisions about whether to trust the information provided by, or seemingly in support of, a multinational mining project. Surmises that expectations of long-term social relationships, and concerns about long-term economic security, played a large role in determining which “scientific” information they chose to trust. Argues for the usefulness of a deeper understanding of relationships between trust, affiliation, and expectations of long-term social and economic relations, in analyzing lay persons’ evaluations of science.

Finds that environmental violence may result not only from resource scarcity or abundance, but from a lack of faith in the government or even the political system. Theorizes protest groups may be subject to the same criteria of legitimacy as the governments or other bodies that they oppose.