Research Projects

Comparing International Development-Caused Forced Displacement and Resettlement (DFDR) to Gentrification-Caused Displacement in Washington, DC

Completed: May 2020

• Part of this research was published in an article for Practicing Anthropology in 2019, titled, “A Comparison Study of International Development-Caused Forced Displacement and Resettlement by the World Bank and Gentrification in the United States.”
• Since 2015 due to my research and editorial work with a scholar of development-caused forced displacement and resettlement, I have been interested in processes of development-caused displacement and socio-economic impacts on community life and landscapes. I conducted and published research on gentrification and displacement in Washington, DC seeking to learn about community-based and other strategies to prevent displacement and promote racial and economic equity of long-term, low-income Black communities in Washington, DC. In 2015, I began conducting literature-based research on international development practices by the World Bank, and in summer of 2018, participant-observation research at monthly meetings of Washington, DC grassroots organization Empower DC’s DC Grassroots Planning Coalition.
• Regarding development-caused forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR) projects conducted by the World Bank, I focus on the World Bank’s former environmental and social Safeguard Policies crafted in the 1980s by Michael Cernea who I worked closely with as a research assistant from 2015 to 2018. I also discuss Cernea’s Impoverishment Risks and Reconstruction Model or “IRR Model,” which examines preventing harmful impacts caused by DFDR in conducting development projects (specifically, Structural Adjustment Programs the World Bank implements by ‘lending’ so-called ‘developing’ countries funds for projects). This article compares the World Bank’s former Safeguard Policies with current policies and conditions for addressing gentrification-caused displacement in Washington, DC. In the U.S., there is no national policy addressing gentrification and in Washington, DC, there is merely a Comprehensive “Comp” Plan, a guidelines document currently under amendment.
• For example, the World Bank’s Safeguard Policies in conjunction with use of the IRR Model at least offer a preventative approach for development practices, seeking to incorporate a procedure for addressing common harmful outcomes in projects in their processes (i.e., of eight risks inherent to projects such as homelessness, marginalization, landlessness, food insecurity, and poverty). These regulative environmental and social Safeguard Policies and the IRR Model at least contain a vision for incorporating into the procedures of development projects the knowledge of project risks and of ascertaining the particular — or contextual — socio-cultural, economic, and environmental conditions of an area, enabling accommodation for peoples and the public sphere pertaining to the area in which the project is being subjected onto or taking place in.
• The World Bank’s former Safeguard Policies contain research and outline possibilities for accountability mechanisms of State apparatuses by the public in regard to development practices, for example, regarding scientific procedures for how to collect socio-economic data on the impacts, benefits, and harms caused by development practices and respective public policies. This research on what is possible regarding the creation of accountability mechanism policies within development practices is important to Washington, DC organizers, policymakers, and constituents in enforcing more just, economically sustainable, and environmentally-safe urban planning for development work — when it is, or should occur — to determine if ‘collective-good’ objectives that have been promised by the State are indeed being met.  This data could be used to hold the DC Mayor’s Office, Office of Planning, City Council, regional developers, and other ‘stakeholders’ with power accountable and toward developing intentional solutions in regard to creating affordable housing, putting an end to systematic dispossession and displacement of predominantly long-term, low-income Black and/or African-American as well as Latinx residents, systemic poverty regarding issues of accessibility to infrastructure and healthcare, and more.

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The River Road Community Oral History Project:

August 2018-June 2019

• For two semesters, I worked with historically Black and/or African-American communities, many of whom are Church-affiliated, along River Road (or the “Potomac River Valley”) in Montgomery County, Maryland for graduate classes at American University. I conducted two oral history interviews of descendants of formerly enslaved residents who purchased land in the county post-Emancipation. The purpose of this research was to combat gross historical erasure of these Black and/or African-American communities with intent to support descendants in correcting the dominant, highly biased, and often dehumanizing narratives regarding how these Black and/or African-American communities are represented (largely based in what has been written by white outsiders to these communities). I also conducted archival research at the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland and literature-based research regarding how these communities experience structural violence through dispossession of their lands due to marginalization, neglect by U.S. government institutions, and ongoing development practices carried out by developers in collusion with the Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) of Montgomery County and other quasi-governmental and government agencies. Further, I conducted participant-observation research with social movements being carried out by these River Road communities, namely at meetings and other events of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC) of the Macedonia Baptist Church on River Road. BACC is a social justice organization advocating for the repossession and memorialization of its nearby historically Black and/or African-American cemetery.