Vulnerable Publics: Climate and Property in Guyana

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the effects of climate change on racial citizenship in coastal Guyana. It focuses on how racial citizenship is informed by the eviction of people from their land for the construction of canals and the state-sponsored engineers who manage the canals' construction. Eager to prove their commitments to international climate change policy, the state's tenuous commitments to the canals have involved confronting both the practice of climate science and the recognition of people's claims to racial-generational land titles. Exploring this unique site, the dissertation focuses on the daily enactments of racial politics, climate science, legal processes, and global ethics situated at a complex historical, environmental, and political conjuncture.