Chloe Ahmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 114337 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chloe Ahmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chloe |
| FAMILY NAME | Ahmann |
| SIGNATURE | AHMANN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8974-190X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 135 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Weaponizing Nature, Naturalizing Violence: Anthropologies of Ecofascism
After decades of denial and obstruction, the global Right is increasingly willing to acknowledge that climate change is a threat to lives and lifeways everywhere. Moreover, some seize on the specter of ecological collapse to advance fascistic politics. Mass shootings by White men who propose that eliminating racialized people will ease environmental pressures—including in Christchurch and El Paso—have been the most spectacular manifestations of t…
The storm before the storm
This essay follows the incursion of far-right groups into post-disaster zones in the United States, including communities struck in fall 2024 by Hurricane Helene, where they work to undermine state agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and recruit white folks to their cause through mutual aid campaigns. Even when the groups in question are not "ecofascist" in the classic sense, our work suggests that they do pledge to protect whit…
Collection introduction: Everyday and emergent ecofascisms
Reading Fascists Reading Shakespeare: Literary Populism in White Power Fiction
This article explores the peculiar reading habits that permeate White power fiction, with a focus on the repeated invocation of William Shakespeare and other Western literary giants by a group of writers here theorized as "literary populists." Literary populists not only reject "elite" interpretations and reclaim the canon "for the masses." They also marshal canonistic texts as masses, while enrolling them in autocratic schemes. In the process, t…
Futures after Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore
A powerful ethnographic study of South Baltimore, a place haunted by toxic pasts in its pursuit of better futures. Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures after Progress, anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writin…
I know I shouldn't say this, but
American AnthropologistEarly View ESSAY “I know I shouldn't say this, but...” Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Cornell University Correspondence Cornell University Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Cornell University Correspondence Cornell University Email: [emai…
Uncertainty in Motion: Rumors of a Proxy War in Late Industrial Baltimore
Until 2016, South Baltimoreans debated a proposed incinerator. Those debates were manifestly about local land use, but rumors spread that something else was really going on. Opponents supposed the plant was secretly owned by a power player in the waste-to-energy sector; supporters swore opponents must be bankrolled by Big Landfill. In short: a waste-industry proxy war was brewing in South Baltimore. I follow these rumors and argue that their pers…
The little things
In this short piece inspired by The Hundreds and written to honor Katie Stewart's work, I reflect on the force of glimpsing people's workaday humanity-particularly when it comes to writing anthropology's "repugnant others
Fieldwork confessionals
American AnthropologistEarly View ESSAY Fieldwork confessionals Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Correspondence Department of Anthropology, Cornell University Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorAli Feser, Ali Feser orcid.org/0000-0002-5910-5531 Society of Fellows, University of Chicago, Chicago, …
Postindustrial Futures and the Edge of the Frontier
Port Covington is a 260-acre development underway in South Baltimore City, featuring a multibillion-dollar campus for the popular sportswear brand Under Armour. It promises to transform a "vacant" and degraded former railyard into a "city within a city" and to catalyze Baltimore's comeback. It also promises to cost a lot. In 2016, after tense public debate, developers secured a $660 million tax increment financing (TIF) deal to begin work, commit…
The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of JusticeMelissaChecker (New York: NYU Press, 2020)
Atmospheric Coalitions: Shifting the Middle in Late Industrial Baltimore
STS scholars offer the atmosphere as an antidote to the homogenizing Anthropocene. They teach us that atmospheres are good to think because they are both diffuse and differential; they reflect the scale of planetary problems without forgetting that those problems manifest unevenly. The atmosphere has, then, become a useful tool for theory work. But it is also being picked up on the ground as a model for grassroots coalition building. This article…
Breathing Late Industrialism
Breakdown, trespass, seepage, degradation: this is late industrialism. Over the past decade, the term has become synonymous with collapse, describing everything from crumbling infrastructure to outmoded paradigms. But the “late” in “late industrial” carries radical potential, too. It points toward the possibility of another world taking shape within the wreckage as people retrofit broken systems, build flexible coalitions, and work creatively wit…
Waste to energy: Garbage prospects and subjunctive politics in late‐industrial Baltimore
If it had been built, the Fairfield Renewable Energy Project would have been the largest trash incinerator in the United States, burning 4,000 tons of waste each day in late‐industrial Baltimore. When it was first proposed, two discourses of renewal coalesced around the project. One was propagated by technocrats who argued incineration should be regulated as a renewable technology. Another emerged among working‐class whites who hoped the plant wo…
It's exhausting to create an event out of nothing: Slow Violence and the Manipulation of Time
In recent years, scholars have developed a vocabulary for describing scenes of insecurity, precarity, and disorder too slow to achieve recognition as crises. Concepts such as slow violence, for example, depend on forms of delay, deferral, attrition, and accumulation whose ordinariness exacerbates suffering. But not enough attention has been paid to how those mired in the experience of protracted harm themselves use time to respond to this pernici…
On Not Being Seen
Accountable Talk: "Real" Conversations in Baltimore City Schools
This article examines the fundamental disconnect between discourses of accountability in education policy and their interpretation on the ground by parents. Based on data from two sites in Baltimore—district-led teacher training and a community facing school restructuring—I argue that both parents and education professionals consider accountability to be a measure of faithfulness to reality, but they position reality in different discursive frame…
And that’s why I Teach For America”: American education reform and the role of redemptive stories
This article interrogates the discursive relationship between school reform and redemption in the United States by examining the personal narratives of Teach For America corps members. After tracing the history of Teach For America and describing the rites of passage in which teachers’ “redemptive stories” are told, I analyze the generic arc that underlies them and show that it mirrors broader processes of in-group socialization. In doing so, I a…
It's exhausting to create an event out of nothing: Slow Violence and the Manipulation of Time
In recent years, scholars have developed a vocabulary for describing scenes of insecurity, precarity, and disorder too slow to achieve recognition as crises. Concepts such as slow violence, for example, depend on forms of delay, deferral, attrition, and accumulation whose ordinariness exacerbates suffering. But not enough attention has been paid to how those mired in the experience of protracted harm themselves use time to respond to this pernici…
Breathing Late Industrialism
Breakdown, trespass, seepage, degradation: this is late industrialism. Over the past decade, the term has become synonymous with collapse, describing everything from crumbling infrastructure to outmoded paradigms. But the “late” in “late industrial” carries radical potential, too. It points toward the possibility of another world taking shape within the wreckage as people retrofit broken systems, build flexible coalitions, and work creatively wit…
Waste to energy: Garbage prospects and subjunctive politics in late‐industrial Baltimore
If it had been built, the Fairfield Renewable Energy Project would have been the largest trash incinerator in the United States, burning 4,000 tons of waste each day in late‐industrial Baltimore. When it was first proposed, two discourses of renewal coalesced around the project. One was propagated by technocrats who argued incineration should be regulated as a renewable technology. Another emerged among working‐class whites who hoped the plant wo…
Fieldwork confessionals
American AnthropologistEarly View ESSAY Fieldwork confessionals Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Correspondence Department of Anthropology, Cornell University Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorAli Feser, Ali Feser orcid.org/0000-0002-5910-5531 Society of Fellows, University of Chicago, Chicago, …
Uncertainty in Motion: Rumors of a Proxy War in Late Industrial Baltimore
Until 2016, South Baltimoreans debated a proposed incinerator. Those debates were manifestly about local land use, but rumors spread that something else was really going on. Opponents supposed the plant was secretly owned by a power player in the waste-to-energy sector; supporters swore opponents must be bankrolled by Big Landfill. In short: a waste-industry proxy war was brewing in South Baltimore. I follow these rumors and argue that their pers…
Postindustrial Futures and the Edge of the Frontier
Port Covington is a 260-acre development underway in South Baltimore City, featuring a multibillion-dollar campus for the popular sportswear brand Under Armour. It promises to transform a "vacant" and degraded former railyard into a "city within a city" and to catalyze Baltimore's comeback. It also promises to cost a lot. In 2016, after tense public debate, developers secured a $660 million tax increment financing (TIF) deal to begin work, commit…
The storm before the storm
This essay follows the incursion of far-right groups into post-disaster zones in the United States, including communities struck in fall 2024 by Hurricane Helene, where they work to undermine state agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and recruit white folks to their cause through mutual aid campaigns. Even when the groups in question are not "ecofascist" in the classic sense, our work suggests that they do pledge to protect whit…
Collection introduction: Everyday and emergent ecofascisms
Reading Fascists Reading Shakespeare: Literary Populism in White Power Fiction
This article explores the peculiar reading habits that permeate White power fiction, with a focus on the repeated invocation of William Shakespeare and other Western literary giants by a group of writers here theorized as "literary populists." Literary populists not only reject "elite" interpretations and reclaim the canon "for the masses." They also marshal canonistic texts as masses, while enrolling them in autocratic schemes. In the process, t…
I know I shouldn't say this, but
American AnthropologistEarly View ESSAY “I know I shouldn't say this, but...” Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Cornell University Correspondence Cornell University Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Cornell University Correspondence Cornell University Email: [emai…
And that’s why I Teach For America”: American education reform and the role of redemptive stories
This article interrogates the discursive relationship between school reform and redemption in the United States by examining the personal narratives of Teach For America corps members. After tracing the history of Teach For America and describing the rites of passage in which teachers’ “redemptive stories” are told, I analyze the generic arc that underlies them and show that it mirrors broader processes of in-group socialization. In doing so, I a…
On Not Being Seen
Accountable Talk: "Real" Conversations in Baltimore City Schools
This article examines the fundamental disconnect between discourses of accountability in education policy and their interpretation on the ground by parents. Based on data from two sites in Baltimore—district-led teacher training and a community facing school restructuring—I argue that both parents and education professionals consider accountability to be a measure of faithfulness to reality, but they position reality in different discursive frame…
It's exhausting to create an event out of nothing: Slow Violence and the Manipulation of Time
In recent years, scholars have developed a vocabulary for describing scenes of insecurity, precarity, and disorder too slow to achieve recognition as crises. Concepts such as slow violence, for example, depend on forms of delay, deferral, attrition, and accumulation whose ordinariness exacerbates suffering. But not enough attention has been paid to how those mired in the experience of protracted harm themselves use time to respond to this pernici…
Waste to energy: Garbage prospects and subjunctive politics in late‐industrial Baltimore
If it had been built, the Fairfield Renewable Energy Project would have been the largest trash incinerator in the United States, burning 4,000 tons of waste each day in late‐industrial Baltimore. When it was first proposed, two discourses of renewal coalesced around the project. One was propagated by technocrats who argued incineration should be regulated as a renewable technology. Another emerged among working‐class whites who hoped the plant wo…
Atmospheric Coalitions: Shifting the Middle in Late Industrial Baltimore
STS scholars offer the atmosphere as an antidote to the homogenizing Anthropocene. They teach us that atmospheres are good to think because they are both diffuse and differential; they reflect the scale of planetary problems without forgetting that those problems manifest unevenly. The atmosphere has, then, become a useful tool for theory work. But it is also being picked up on the ground as a model for grassroots coalition building. This article…
Breathing Late Industrialism
Breakdown, trespass, seepage, degradation: this is late industrialism. Over the past decade, the term has become synonymous with collapse, describing everything from crumbling infrastructure to outmoded paradigms. But the “late” in “late industrial” carries radical potential, too. It points toward the possibility of another world taking shape within the wreckage as people retrofit broken systems, build flexible coalitions, and work creatively wit…
The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of JusticeMelissaChecker (New York: NYU Press, 2020)
Postindustrial Futures and the Edge of the Frontier
Port Covington is a 260-acre development underway in South Baltimore City, featuring a multibillion-dollar campus for the popular sportswear brand Under Armour. It promises to transform a "vacant" and degraded former railyard into a "city within a city" and to catalyze Baltimore's comeback. It also promises to cost a lot. In 2016, after tense public debate, developers secured a $660 million tax increment financing (TIF) deal to begin work, commit…
I know I shouldn't say this, but
American AnthropologistEarly View ESSAY “I know I shouldn't say this, but...” Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Cornell University Correspondence Cornell University Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Cornell University Correspondence Cornell University Email: [emai…
Uncertainty in Motion: Rumors of a Proxy War in Late Industrial Baltimore
Until 2016, South Baltimoreans debated a proposed incinerator. Those debates were manifestly about local land use, but rumors spread that something else was really going on. Opponents supposed the plant was secretly owned by a power player in the waste-to-energy sector; supporters swore opponents must be bankrolled by Big Landfill. In short: a waste-industry proxy war was brewing in South Baltimore. I follow these rumors and argue that their pers…
The little things
In this short piece inspired by The Hundreds and written to honor Katie Stewart's work, I reflect on the force of glimpsing people's workaday humanity-particularly when it comes to writing anthropology's "repugnant others
Fieldwork confessionals
American AnthropologistEarly View ESSAY Fieldwork confessionals Chloe Ahmann, Corresponding Author Chloe Ahmann [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-190X Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Correspondence Department of Anthropology, Cornell University Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorAli Feser, Ali Feser orcid.org/0000-0002-5910-5531 Society of Fellows, University of Chicago, Chicago, …
Futures after Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore
A powerful ethnographic study of South Baltimore, a place haunted by toxic pasts in its pursuit of better futures. Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures after Progress, anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writin…
Weaponizing Nature, Naturalizing Violence: Anthropologies of Ecofascism
After decades of denial and obstruction, the global Right is increasingly willing to acknowledge that climate change is a threat to lives and lifeways everywhere. Moreover, some seize on the specter of ecological collapse to advance fascistic politics. Mass shootings by White men who propose that eliminating racialized people will ease environmental pressures—including in Christchurch and El Paso—have been the most spectacular manifestations of t…
The storm before the storm
This essay follows the incursion of far-right groups into post-disaster zones in the United States, including communities struck in fall 2024 by Hurricane Helene, where they work to undermine state agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and recruit white folks to their cause through mutual aid campaigns. Even when the groups in question are not "ecofascist" in the classic sense, our work suggests that they do pledge to protect whit…
Collection introduction: Everyday and emergent ecofascisms
Reading Fascists Reading Shakespeare: Literary Populism in White Power Fiction
This article explores the peculiar reading habits that permeate White power fiction, with a focus on the repeated invocation of William Shakespeare and other Western literary giants by a group of writers here theorized as "literary populists." Literary populists not only reject "elite" interpretations and reclaim the canon "for the masses." They also marshal canonistic texts as masses, while enrolling them in autocratic schemes. In the process, t…
Geographies of human-animal interactions (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature (5 works) · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities (5 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works)