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. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors.   Examining tensions between White and Black residents, environmental activists and industrial enthusiasts, local elders and younger generations, Ahmann shows how this community has become a battleground for competing political futures whose stakes reverberate beyond its six square miles in a present after progress has lost steam. And yet—as one young resident explains—“that’s not how the story ends.” Rigorous and moving, Futures after Progress probes the deep roots of our ecological predicament, offering insight into what lies ahead for a country beset by dreams deferred and a planet on the precipice of change.

Table of Contents:
Map of the Curtis Bay Region Preface: The Dust Introduction Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore Part One: A Cautionary Tale Impossible to Say Chapter One Forgotten in Anticipation Little Boxes Chapter Two Cataclysmic Hypotheticals Buying Time Chapter Three Could’ve Been Worse Part Two: Not How the Story Ends Beautiful City Chapter Four Art of the Possible Out of Nothing Chapter Five Tick, Tick, BOOM A Black Hole Epilogue Ethnography in the Subjunctive Acknowledgments Notes References Index

About the Author :
Chloe Ahmann is assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell University. This is her first book.

Review :
"Futures After Progress makes numerous contributions to the theory and method of the environmental humanities, which is especially prescient for researchers across the African continent and the global south. Ahmann offers not only signposts for the future of anthropology, but also for the ways in which we as researchers reckon with entangled lifeworlds through our field sites. Bringing this work into conversation with students across the world will no doubt forge methodological dexterity along with positional sensitivities which will charter new terrains, possibilities, and futures across the social sciences" "With this richly researched book, Ahmann gives us a powerful ethnography of the industrialized Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore. . .. The pleasure of this ethnography is the delicacy of Ahmann's analysis of the extremely fragile formations of hope that make up our visions of the future and thus our political aspirations. In a time of great uncertainty, Futures After Progress reminds us of this necessary, but ephemeral, form of political labor." "A striking ethnographic inquiry into the residues of industrial capitalism and the ways in which it shapes futures long after its promises have faltered. . . . Ahmann’s prose is both seductively complex and deeply evocative, a rarity in academic writing. She balances theoretical density with ethnographic intimacy, offering a text that is as methodologically rigorous as it is politically urgent." “I began this book as an anthropologist, but a few pages in, realized I was reading it as the little Black boy who acquired a chronic respiratory illness while growing up in Baltimore. I was playing football outside and suddenly couldn’t breathe. Then an ambulance came. Before long, inhalers, respirators, and ventilators were a feature of everyday life—both for me and my two brothers, who also suffered from asthma. I wish we had Ahmann’s book back then. Maybe, just maybe, we would’ve better understood the uncertainties of a childhood existence defined by hazy and noxious forces that threatened to debilitate and kill us. Written with empathy and backed by rigorous analysis, Futures after Progress is a revelation.” “Ahmann folds time and space in this stunning ethnography to ask how a future tense forms after sacrifice, resilience, and progress are exhausted—a vital intervention into contemporary conditions.” "Compelling. . . Anchored by a decade of involvement with varied populations, sometimes in conflict, in an area of South Baltimore that has been dominated for centuries by damaging industrial and post-industrial projects, Ahmann. . . skillfully evokes problems and people, united and divided by profound meditations on time past and futures imagined." "Beautifully written and necessary . . . There is so much to admire about this book. . . I also forgot to add a note of criticism, seemingly mandatory in reviews such as this. OK, here’s one: Why do we have to wait so long for another book from Ahmann?" "Chloe Ahmann’s debut book, Futures After Progress, is a well-researched and a unique publication. . . . Apart from discussing at length the harmful effects of industrialization, borne unevenly by racialized groups and extending across generations, Ahmann has analyzed the diverse ways in which the deteriorating environment of South Baltimore has permeated all kinds of relationships, including chemical and ethical as well as structural and personal. Moreover, by examining the efforts by the local population to realize a secure and healthy future, she can demonstrate the diverse ways in which people in the US have politicized 'impure' environments." "One of the most formidable commentaries on the current political situation in the USA, and the Anthropocene at large."