Bruce Braun

he/him

[email protected]

Geography, Environment & Society

452 Social Sciences Building

267 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Collegiate Affiliation

Professor ,

Geography, Environment & Society

Affiliate Faculty,

American Studies

I am a political and environmental geographer whose research focuses on four areas: the political ecology of resource extraction; histories and futures of extractive infrastructures; decolonial and anticolonial environmentalisms; and philosophy and geography. I am currently working on two major research projects. The first explores recent transformations in the forest industry and forestry politics in British Columbia, Canada, including the rapid growth of First Nations forestry and the response to it by settler environmentalists. It seeks to expand and refine our understanding of the relation between resource extraction, environmentalism, and decolonization in Canada. The second explores how efforts to remove settler infrastructures along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis-St. Paul reveal their geophysical, ecological, and political entanglements. The work is part of a larger effort to theorize the dismantling of infrastructures as a “minor” politics of the Anthropocene.

I also write and teach on urban environments, political ecology, philosophy and geography, and creativity, design, and experimentation in geographical research.

Prospective graduate students: If you are interested in working with me, please send me a short CV and statement of your research interests.

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

PhD: Geography, University of British Columbia, 1996

Specialties

Ecopolitics
Political ecology
Infrastructure studies
Philosophy & Geography
Green Urbanism
Anthropocene in social, political and ecological thought

Publications

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Publications

Braun, Bruce and Sarah Whatmore, eds. 2010. Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy and Public Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 319pp.
Braun, Bruce. 2002. The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture and Power on Canada’s West Coast. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. 347pp
Braun, Bruce, 2014. “A new urban dispositif? Governing life in the age of climate change.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32, 49-64.
Thomas, Mary E. and Bruce Braun, Eds. Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Available Feb 2023.
Thomas, Mary E. and Bruce Braun. “Introduction: (Un)Settling the boom.” In Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun, Eds. Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Available Feb 2023
Braun, Bruce. “Crisis ordinariness: The Bakken boom in late capitalism.” In Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun, Eds. Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Available Feb 2023.
Lehman, Jessica and Bruce Braun. “On the ‘dark side’ of the boom: Narratives of social crisis and liberal arts of governance.” In Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun, Eds. Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Available Feb 2023.
Lunstrum, Elizabeth, Neel Ahuja, Bruce Braun, Rosemary Collard, Patricia J. Lopez and Rebecca WY Wong, 2021. “More-than-human and deeply human perspectives on COVID-19”. Antipode Braun, Bruce. 2019.
Fracking. Braun, Bruce.
Braun, Bruce, 2019. “Taking earth forces seriously”. In O. Saloojee, E. Scott and K. Lutsky, eds. Viscosity. Mobilizing Materialities. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Dept. of Architecture, 47-62.
Wakefield, Stephanie and Bruce Braun, 2019. “Oystertecture: infrastructure, profanation and the sacred figure of the human.” In Kregg Hetherington, ed. Infrastructure, Environment, Life. Durham: Duke University Press, 193-215.
Braun, Bruce and *Stephanie Wakefield, 2018. “Destituent power and common use: reading Agamben in the Anthropocene.” In Mat Coleman and John Agnew, eds. Geographies of Power. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Braun, Bruce, ed. 2016. Futures: Imagining Socio-Ecological Transformation. London: Routledge, 218pp.
Braun, Bruce. 2018. “Novos materialismos e economia política: levando a sério as forças da terra.” In: Marta I. M. et al., eds. Perspectivas de Natureza: Geografia, formas de natureza e política. São Paulo: Annablume, p. 43-60.
Nelson, Sara and Bruce Braun, 2017. “Autonomia in the Anthropocene”, South Atlantic Quarterly, 116, 2: 223-236.
Braun, Bruce, 2015. “From critique to experiment: political ecology in the Anthropocene”. Handbook of Political Ecology, edited by T. Perreault, G. Bridge and J. McCarthy. New York, Routledge, 102-114.
Braun, Bruce, 2015. “New materialisms and neoliberal natures.” Antipode, 47, 1: 1-14.
Castree, Noel and Bruce Braun, eds. 2001. Social Nature: Theory, Practice, Politics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 295pp.

Awards

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Courses

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