Raising Cane in the 'Glades: The Global Sugar Trade and the Transformation of Florida

Over the last century, the Everglades underwent a metaphorical and ecological transition from impenetrable swamp to endangered wetland. At the heart of this transformation lies the Florida sugar industry, which by the 1990s was at the center of the political storm over the multi-billion dollar ecological “restoration” of the Everglades. Raising Cane in the ’Glades is the first study to situate the environmental transformation of the Everglades within the economic and historical geography of global sugar production and trade. Using, among other sources, interviews, government and corporate documents, and recently declassified U.S. State Department memoranda, Gail M. Hollander demonstrates that the development of Florida’s sugar region was the outcome of pitched battles reaching the highest political offices in the U.S. and in countries around the world, especially Cuba—which emerges in her narrative as a model, a competitor, and the regional “other” to Florida’s “self.” Spanning the period from the age of empire to the era of globalization, the book shows how the “sugar question”—a label nineteenth-century economists coined for intense international debates on sugar production and trade—emerges repeatedly in new guises. Hollander uses the sugar question as a thread to stitch together past and present, local and global, in explaining Everglades transformation.

Historical development of residential segregation and black housing quality in Dade County

This paper examines the relationship between the historical development of residential segregation in Black areas of Dade County and the level of housing quality in those areas. Previous literature studies the effect of hypersegregation on housing quality. Instead, this paper analyzes the nature of each Black community and the social process by which they became segregated in contrast with only hypersegregation being considered. Data were drawn from the 1990 Census of Housing and Population at the block group level for Dade County. Two indicators for housing quality were considered: crowding and rent. Six categories for Black areas in Dade County and one residual category were developed for the analysis. Regression's results show that the effect of each community on housing quality varies. For example, overcrowding goes down in first-ghetto areas when compared to second-ghetto areas, although the percentage of Blacks in both communities is about the same. ^

Climate Change and Globalization: Toward a Deleuzoguattarian Approach in Geography

While there is considerable literature on neoliberalism in and of nature and the environment as well as in the interface between climate change and globalization, attempts at marrying the various conceptualizations of these have been limited. In this paper, I briefly review a portion of the literature on climate change and globalization (both broadly defined) locating the connections and disconnections on the topic. I then attempt to synthesize some of the ideas and problems expressed in many of these existing approaches to develop a Deleuzoguattarian approach to the intersections of climate change and globalization across spaces and scales. Finally, I argue that a non-linear historical materialism provides a way of addressing the limitations in existing frameworks.