Methods Overview
During European colonization in the 18th century, many towns in rural Vermont were built to be in close connection with the rivers running through them. Built, as locals say, with their “backs to the river,” eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrial land use required linking strong water flows, mill dams, and industrial buildings to further economic development. Now, the Connecticut River watershed – in which our study areas of the Black and White River watersheds are located – is one of the most highly dammed in the nation. Towns in these watersheds are characterized by scenic landscapes, close social ties, interconnected municipal needs, vast wealth disparities, minimal to no public transit, and employment now largely driven by a tourist economy – itself heavily dependent on appropriate weather.
Current flooding conditions are promoting more radical or transformational assessments of water infrastructure, including existing dams, culverts, bridges, and roads. This makes these river valleys key sites to study these social, technical, natural relationships while they are in transformation. We hope our work can inform scholars and practitioners of disaster response, recovery, and mitigation in rural New England, as well as folks in other areas where industrial building habits and land use practices have shaped relations to rivers like this. For instance, Rust Belt cities and rural areas in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York; Appalachian Mountain communities; and rural communities on the west coast of the United States are just a few of the places where our study outcomes may be applicable.
Our interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, geographers, and earth scientists understands the problem of rural pluvial flooding as a simultaneously social, technical, and natural phenomenon. Dr. Charis Boke (anthropologist and community organizer) and Dr. Sarah Kelly (geographer and expert in participatory mapping) initiated this project in 2023. They are joined by Dr. Elizabeth Reddy (anthropologist and engineering education expert), Mx. Aletha Spang (geographer and GIS specialist) and Mr. Noah Bezason (graduate student in humanitarian engineering and sciences) in implementing this project.
The project’s methods emerge from community-identified needs in the context of our conversations across these disciplines and with community partner organizations. In an academic sense, our research is informed by anthropologist Elizabeth Carpenter-Song’s work in rural New England, which she characterizes as “problem-oriented ethnography” (Carpenter-Song 2022). A problem-oriented ethnography uses the problem or issue identified by a community or individual – in this case, floods and response – as the starting place for developing questions, and ways of asking them.
Our problem-oriented approach is community based; it is ethnographic, geographic, and historical; and it is informed by humanitarian engineering approaches. We use these interdisciplinary methods to develop engaged pedagogical approaches to teaching – in college classrooms and in the community.
Community-Based
This project is grounded in a community-based ethic, whereby the methods come from the community. Community-based participatory research is an established approach to scholarly research that puts the needs and questions of the community first. The project is informed by Dr. Charis Boke’s work with local mutual aid groups in summer 2023 in the aftermath of the Great Floods and the project foregrounds mutual aid as both theory and practice. It is also informed by Dr. Sarah Kelly’s long term work with Mapuche-Williche communities in Chile. The community provides iterative feedback on any products (maps, teaching resources, etc) as they are refined. This work takes place through community meetings, tabling at community events, and Open Space sessions.
Ethnographic
Ethnography means literally “writing culture.” People who do ethnographic research use the methods of participant observation, interviews, small group conversations and observation in order to help them understand how people make meaning in their social contexts. We use ethnographic methods as a key starting place for our community-based participatory research ethic – ethnographic methods help us identify questions and approaches in conversation with community members themselves.
- Community Meetings: we attend regular meetings of the Long Term Recovery Group and Community Lunches in the Black and White River valleys. Recovery from 2012’s Hurricane Irene took 11 years; we anticipate that our continued engagement from 2024-2028, one year to five years after the 2023 Floods, will give us a chance to work with community members and build a solid understanding of the early years of recovery.
- Interviews: we conduct interviews with local and state officials, as well as with advocacy groups, food bank volunteers and shelter workers. These interviews help us understand legal, political, and social debates about what is needed in flood recovery response and communications.
Geographic
Our work relies on geographic methods of participatory mapping, geospatial data collection, and spatial analysis to produce new understandings of floods. With our help, communities spatialize stories of the flood through physical maps. The data are translated into dynamic visualizations that will help deliver a key goal: a pilot version of a new, community-driven, widely accessible mapping tool, designed for communication and collaboration before, during, and after inland flooding events. We use traditional cartographic techniques while exploring creative and alternative methods for visual communication, prioritizing legibility and community feedback.
- Participatory Mapping: community meetings
- Community Science mapping: survey 1-2-3/Culvert crawlers
Humanitarian Engineering
Engineering methods in this project draw attention to the technical relations that entangle with the socio-natural processes of disaster (dams, reservoirs, sewage treatment plants, well contamination, unhoused folks, mobile home parks, land use laws). Our work is grounded in a humanitarian ethic as we aim to collaborate with community groups, activists, and response/recovery professionals to design technical tools related to flooding.
Historical
We’re interested in how folks deal with things both before and after serious events – both “post-disaster” and “disaster preparation” work. Many folks we’ve talked to about their 2023 experiences describe how they’re “always waiting for the next one,” which is a feeling noted by other disaster survivors (e.g. Faas and Barrios 2015; Hoffman and Barrios 2020). By thinking about both what people do to prepare for disasters, and also how people respond to disasters, we can get a deeper sense of the historical and social context of any particular disaster event.
- In addition to interviewing folks about their experiences, we’re compiling an archive of newspaper articles, online media, legal cases, and policy papers about disaster recovery in Vermont from 1970 to the present. Archiving local news sources will enable analysis of the media landscape that shapes visibility and public perception of flood disasters in the region.
- We’re also developing a public opinion survey about flood disaster communications and recovery practices. In 2025, we hope to use this survey both in an online form – so it’s accessible statewide – and also in person with folks in Ludlow, Cavendish, and Hartford, Vermont.
Pedagogical
This project incorporates pedagogical methods by integrating students at Dartmouth College and Colorado School of Mines through coursework and fellowships. In the summer of 2024, Dr. Sarah Kelly led Community Resilience Fellows through the Energy Justice Clinic to complete surveys of culverts in Cavendish. This work will continue through the fall with students from Dr. Charis Boke’s course, Anthropology of Disaster. Students will also develop new projects with community partners. Additionally, Dr. Beth Reddy is incorporating this project into the development of curricular materials for engineering students to introduce them to the complexity of resilience, including important concepts related to socio-natural processes and community collaboration.