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Latent control and settler control: Néstor L. Silva, ‘Cattle, Fracking, and the Problem of Latent Control is American Settler Ecology’, Engagement, 2020

05Jul20

Excerpt: But, and this is a key point of this essay, some involved in the ecology of the Bakken operate under the assumption that everything is, or can be, under control. That belief—that control is latent, achievable if occasionally absent—is a persistent facet of American settler culture. In protections for the cattle and in the PPE at the frack site, control is an aspiration. In fencing, cattle guards, and coveralls—and also in the American Bison and COVID-19 as I argue below—the drawing of socioecological boundaries can be a means of reaffirming the claims to environmental control that shaped the United States.


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