Andrew Curley
Biographic Data
| ID | 312661 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Curley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Curley |
| SIGNATURE | CURLEY A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Arizona |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7392-3565 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 246 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Consequential theory, consequential geography
Relations outside of injury: Black ecologies, Indigenous geographies, and repair
The cene scene: Who gets to theorize global time and how do we center indigenous and black futurities
The Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Plantationocene are propositions for new ways of understanding the role of people on the planet. The theories hold that humans, capitalism, or the logic of plantation agriculture have so fundamentally reworked the world that we can demarcate these as new eras in the planet's history. In this article, we argue that these narratives privilege Eurocentric narratives of human history, failing to adequately engage B…
Unruly River and Plantation Logics
In this contribution to the Plantationocene forum, we ask what and how the Plantationocene allows us to see. Considering the unruly Colorado, we think through how both the delimitation of time into epochs in the form of “cenes” and the search for plantation logics might limit what we can see and understand, by excluding the unruliness of both nature and people, and by insisting on a historical vision that maintains European agency, even if render…
The work of repair: Land, Relation, and Pedagogy
Geographers center space and place in our understanding of power, arguing that relationships to place matter, that space is a result of power relations, and that how we represent the world makes the world. But to what extent do we turn these methods of analysis to understanding our relations to the land beneath our feet? We consider the experience and limits of repair across four sites, approaching land and place-making as political and cultural …
Indigenous Perspectives on Dismantling the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Rural Sociology☆
Rural Sociology has failed to incorporate Settler-colonialism and Indigenous theory in studying rural social relations. This presents a serious gap in the discipline's conceptualization of land as the foundation of social reproduction. Indigenous theory provides rich insights about humans' relations among themselves and with the more-than-human that inform our understanding of Settler colonialism as a driver of social formation, and human-environ…
Dams and tribal land loss in the United States
Indigenous peoples in the United States have faced continued land dispossession for centuries. Through the reservation system as well as policies including forced removal and allotment, colonial settlers and later the federal government acquired over two billion acres from Native Nations. We argue that another important, yet understudied and unquantified, contributor to tribal land loss is through the construction of dams. By restricting water fl…
Decolonisation is a Political Project: Overcoming Impasses between Indigenous Sovereignty and Abolition
In this article we seek to intervene in conversations that frame Black abolition and decolonisation as antagonistic political projects. We respond to Garba and Sorentino’s (2020) “Slavery is a metaphor”, which critiques Tuck and Yang (2012; “Decolonization is not a metaphor”) and decolonisation. Our concern is that scholarship in this vein denies Indigenous sovereignty and futurity while unnecessarily characterising decolonisation as antiblack. W…
Livestock, Colonialism, and Commodity Frontiers in the U.S. Southwest
Commodity frontiers are a useful way to think about the expansion and rearticulation of capitalist modes of production across the globe. A weakness of this approach is to miss deeper histories of colonialism and domination at the sites of the metaphorical frontier. This commentary thinks through Diné relationship with sheep to think through how livestock often contains older relationships that transcend colonial limitations
Unsettling Indian Water Settlements: The Little Colorado River, the San Juan River, and Colonial Enclosures
In the United States, indigenous nations are settling water claims for access to the continent's surface waters. This legal‐political process transforms the nature of indigenous water use to conform with logics of quantification that are foundational to western water laws. This article critiques Indian water settlements by highlighting the inherent limitations and marginalisation of indigenous water rights in two recent examples of water settleme…
Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim, India
In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation a…
Infrastructures as colonial beachheads: The Central Arizona Project and the taking of Navajo resources
Colonial difference is a story of national infrastructures. To understand how colonialism works across Indigenous lands, we need to appreciate the physical, legal, and political factors involved in the building and expanding of national infrastructures in different historical contexts; infrastructures that arrive in some places while denied in others. Using archival documents, this article accounts for the colonial politics necessary to bring Col…
Against colonial grounds: Geography on Indigenous lands
In this response to Natalie Oswin’s provocation, ‘An other geography’, we consider how we might work against settler narratives and structures from our situated positions in the discipline and in a specific academic institution in the US South. Following Diné student Majerle Lister, we ask what it would mean to consider giving the land back: what does that entail? The academic institutions we inhabit were built to insure white futurity, on fictiv…
Our Winters’ Rights”: Challenging Colonial Water Laws
Much of the scholarship on Indigenous water rights in the United States focuses on legal and political rights awarded or denied in water settlements. This article highlights the voice of settlement opponents within Diné communities over the proposed Little Colorado River Settlement in 2012 between the Navajo Nation and Arizona. Using interviews with key actors, observations of water hearings, and a mini focus group with settlement opponents, my r…
T'áá hwó ají t'éegoand the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers
The development of coal mining in the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States, is understood as a consequence of economic dependency, resource curse, modernization, cultural contradiction, and so on. Missing from these frameworks are the perspectives of indigenous actors who participate in these industries. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Navajo coal workers and community membe…
A failed green future: Navajo Green Jobs and energy “transition” in the Navajo Nation
Infrastructures as colonial beachheads: The Central Arizona Project and the taking of Navajo resources
Colonial difference is a story of national infrastructures. To understand how colonialism works across Indigenous lands, we need to appreciate the physical, legal, and political factors involved in the building and expanding of national infrastructures in different historical contexts; infrastructures that arrive in some places while denied in others. Using archival documents, this article accounts for the colonial politics necessary to bring Col…
A failed green future: Navajo Green Jobs and energy “transition” in the Navajo Nation
Against colonial grounds: Geography on Indigenous lands
In this response to Natalie Oswin’s provocation, ‘An other geography’, we consider how we might work against settler narratives and structures from our situated positions in the discipline and in a specific academic institution in the US South. Following Diné student Majerle Lister, we ask what it would mean to consider giving the land back: what does that entail? The academic institutions we inhabit were built to insure white futurity, on fictiv…
T'áá hwó ají t'éegoand the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers
The development of coal mining in the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States, is understood as a consequence of economic dependency, resource curse, modernization, cultural contradiction, and so on. Missing from these frameworks are the perspectives of indigenous actors who participate in these industries. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Navajo coal workers and community membe…
Unsettling Indian Water Settlements: The Little Colorado River, the San Juan River, and Colonial Enclosures
In the United States, indigenous nations are settling water claims for access to the continent's surface waters. This legal‐political process transforms the nature of indigenous water use to conform with logics of quantification that are foundational to western water laws. This article critiques Indian water settlements by highlighting the inherent limitations and marginalisation of indigenous water rights in two recent examples of water settleme…
The cene scene: Who gets to theorize global time and how do we center indigenous and black futurities
The Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Plantationocene are propositions for new ways of understanding the role of people on the planet. The theories hold that humans, capitalism, or the logic of plantation agriculture have so fundamentally reworked the world that we can demarcate these as new eras in the planet's history. In this article, we argue that these narratives privilege Eurocentric narratives of human history, failing to adequately engage B…
Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim, India
In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation a…
Our Winters’ Rights”: Challenging Colonial Water Laws
Much of the scholarship on Indigenous water rights in the United States focuses on legal and political rights awarded or denied in water settlements. This article highlights the voice of settlement opponents within Diné communities over the proposed Little Colorado River Settlement in 2012 between the Navajo Nation and Arizona. Using interviews with key actors, observations of water hearings, and a mini focus group with settlement opponents, my r…
Decolonisation is a Political Project: Overcoming Impasses between Indigenous Sovereignty and Abolition
In this article we seek to intervene in conversations that frame Black abolition and decolonisation as antagonistic political projects. We respond to Garba and Sorentino’s (2020) “Slavery is a metaphor”, which critiques Tuck and Yang (2012; “Decolonization is not a metaphor”) and decolonisation. Our concern is that scholarship in this vein denies Indigenous sovereignty and futurity while unnecessarily characterising decolonisation as antiblack. W…
The work of repair: Land, Relation, and Pedagogy
Geographers center space and place in our understanding of power, arguing that relationships to place matter, that space is a result of power relations, and that how we represent the world makes the world. But to what extent do we turn these methods of analysis to understanding our relations to the land beneath our feet? We consider the experience and limits of repair across four sites, approaching land and place-making as political and cultural …
Unruly River and Plantation Logics
In this contribution to the Plantationocene forum, we ask what and how the Plantationocene allows us to see. Considering the unruly Colorado, we think through how both the delimitation of time into epochs in the form of “cenes” and the search for plantation logics might limit what we can see and understand, by excluding the unruliness of both nature and people, and by insisting on a historical vision that maintains European agency, even if render…
Consequential theory, consequential geography
Relations outside of injury: Black ecologies, Indigenous geographies, and repair
Indigenous Perspectives on Dismantling the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Rural Sociology☆
Rural Sociology has failed to incorporate Settler-colonialism and Indigenous theory in studying rural social relations. This presents a serious gap in the discipline's conceptualization of land as the foundation of social reproduction. Indigenous theory provides rich insights about humans' relations among themselves and with the more-than-human that inform our understanding of Settler colonialism as a driver of social formation, and human-environ…
A failed green future: Navajo Green Jobs and energy “transition” in the Navajo Nation
Our Winters’ Rights”: Challenging Colonial Water Laws
Much of the scholarship on Indigenous water rights in the United States focuses on legal and political rights awarded or denied in water settlements. This article highlights the voice of settlement opponents within Diné communities over the proposed Little Colorado River Settlement in 2012 between the Navajo Nation and Arizona. Using interviews with key actors, observations of water hearings, and a mini focus group with settlement opponents, my r…
T'áá hwó ají t'éegoand the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers
The development of coal mining in the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States, is understood as a consequence of economic dependency, resource curse, modernization, cultural contradiction, and so on. Missing from these frameworks are the perspectives of indigenous actors who participate in these industries. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Navajo coal workers and community membe…
Against colonial grounds: Geography on Indigenous lands
In this response to Natalie Oswin’s provocation, ‘An other geography’, we consider how we might work against settler narratives and structures from our situated positions in the discipline and in a specific academic institution in the US South. Following Diné student Majerle Lister, we ask what it would mean to consider giving the land back: what does that entail? The academic institutions we inhabit were built to insure white futurity, on fictiv…
Livestock, Colonialism, and Commodity Frontiers in the U.S. Southwest
Commodity frontiers are a useful way to think about the expansion and rearticulation of capitalist modes of production across the globe. A weakness of this approach is to miss deeper histories of colonialism and domination at the sites of the metaphorical frontier. This commentary thinks through Diné relationship with sheep to think through how livestock often contains older relationships that transcend colonial limitations
Unsettling Indian Water Settlements: The Little Colorado River, the San Juan River, and Colonial Enclosures
In the United States, indigenous nations are settling water claims for access to the continent's surface waters. This legal‐political process transforms the nature of indigenous water use to conform with logics of quantification that are foundational to western water laws. This article critiques Indian water settlements by highlighting the inherent limitations and marginalisation of indigenous water rights in two recent examples of water settleme…
Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim, India
In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation a…
Infrastructures as colonial beachheads: The Central Arizona Project and the taking of Navajo resources
Colonial difference is a story of national infrastructures. To understand how colonialism works across Indigenous lands, we need to appreciate the physical, legal, and political factors involved in the building and expanding of national infrastructures in different historical contexts; infrastructures that arrive in some places while denied in others. Using archival documents, this article accounts for the colonial politics necessary to bring Col…
Decolonisation is a Political Project: Overcoming Impasses between Indigenous Sovereignty and Abolition
In this article we seek to intervene in conversations that frame Black abolition and decolonisation as antagonistic political projects. We respond to Garba and Sorentino’s (2020) “Slavery is a metaphor”, which critiques Tuck and Yang (2012; “Decolonization is not a metaphor”) and decolonisation. Our concern is that scholarship in this vein denies Indigenous sovereignty and futurity while unnecessarily characterising decolonisation as antiblack. W…
Dams and tribal land loss in the United States
Indigenous peoples in the United States have faced continued land dispossession for centuries. Through the reservation system as well as policies including forced removal and allotment, colonial settlers and later the federal government acquired over two billion acres from Native Nations. We argue that another important, yet understudied and unquantified, contributor to tribal land loss is through the construction of dams. By restricting water fl…
Relations outside of injury: Black ecologies, Indigenous geographies, and repair
The cene scene: Who gets to theorize global time and how do we center indigenous and black futurities
The Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Plantationocene are propositions for new ways of understanding the role of people on the planet. The theories hold that humans, capitalism, or the logic of plantation agriculture have so fundamentally reworked the world that we can demarcate these as new eras in the planet's history. In this article, we argue that these narratives privilege Eurocentric narratives of human history, failing to adequately engage B…
Unruly River and Plantation Logics
In this contribution to the Plantationocene forum, we ask what and how the Plantationocene allows us to see. Considering the unruly Colorado, we think through how both the delimitation of time into epochs in the form of “cenes” and the search for plantation logics might limit what we can see and understand, by excluding the unruliness of both nature and people, and by insisting on a historical vision that maintains European agency, even if render…
The work of repair: Land, Relation, and Pedagogy
Geographers center space and place in our understanding of power, arguing that relationships to place matter, that space is a result of power relations, and that how we represent the world makes the world. But to what extent do we turn these methods of analysis to understanding our relations to the land beneath our feet? We consider the experience and limits of repair across four sites, approaching land and place-making as political and cultural …
Indigenous Perspectives on Dismantling the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Rural Sociology☆
Rural Sociology has failed to incorporate Settler-colonialism and Indigenous theory in studying rural social relations. This presents a serious gap in the discipline's conceptualization of land as the foundation of social reproduction. Indigenous theory provides rich insights about humans' relations among themselves and with the more-than-human that inform our understanding of Settler colonialism as a driver of social formation, and human-environ…
Consequential theory, consequential geography
Sociology (12 works) · Indigenous (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Geography (9 works) · Ecology (8 works) · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works)