Land Loss in Louisiana: A Neopragmatic Redescription (RaumFragen: Stadt – Region – Landschaft)

This book is oriented on testing and developing the neopragmatic approach of horizontal geographies, in which we follow approaches of natural sciences, social sciences, and cultural studies. Regional focus is thereby put on a rapidly changing elemental space and its social representations, characterized by unstable and not well-defined hybridities: coastal Louisiana. This region is highly dynamic: the Mississippi River in particular, with its extensive sediments, has shifted the coastal fringe of present-day Louisiana into the Gulf of Mexico. This land gain is contrasted by natural processes, but also by processes resultant of human intervention which cause marine encroachment. A complex interplay of different aspects is directly and indirectly leading to coastal land loss which makes the question of how to describe emerging hybrid spaces virulent and highlights the limits of a positivist understanding of boundaries that is also physically geographical. In the neopragmatic tradition, positivist research findings will be framed in social constructivist terms and supplemented by phenomenological approaches to Louisiana's coastal space, thus suggesting the need for and potentials of horizontal geographic integration of different theoretical and methodological approaches as well as researcher perspectives and data bases. The Authors Prof. Dr. Dr. Olaf Khne, University of Tbingen, Research Department of Geography Lara Koegst, University of Tbingen, Research Department of Geography Synopsis Contents 1 Introduction 2 A Neopragmatic Theoretical Framing and Its Operationalization 2.1 Landscape 1, 2, and 3—Some Basic Features 2.2 Neopragmatic Landscape Theoretical Approach 2.3 Life Chances as a Framework for Normative Statements 2.4 Operationalizing Previous Thinking into a ‘Horizontal Geography’ Research Program on Louisiana Coastal Land Loss 2.5 Conceptual Considerations for our Study 3 The Multiple Causes of Coastal Land Loss in Louisiana—An Overview 3.1 Introduction to the Topic of Coastal Land Loss: Dimensions and Further Conceptual Approach 3.2 Processes of Coastal Land Loss Inclined Towards the Pole of the Natural 3.3 Processes of Land Loss Inclined Towards the Pole of the Cultural 3.4 Coastal Land Loss in Louisiana: A Review of Spatial Extent, Temporality, Cultural-Natural Hybridity, and Human Mitigation and Adaptation Options 4 The Limits of Representation and Explicitness in Cartographic Representations—A Neopragmatic Redescription of the Louisiana Coast as a Hybrid Spatial Pastiche 4.1 Cartographic Representations—A Redescription in the Light of the Theory of Three Spaces 4.2 Of the Challenge to Draw a Clear Line: Cartographic Representations of the Coastline 4.3 Cartography as Twofold Mitigator of Complicatedness, Complexity, and Contingency 4.4 Of Hybridizations and Pastiches and the Cartographic Treatment of Them—A Re-description of Coastal Louisiana 5 Land Loss and Life Chances 5.1 Social Issues of Land Loss 5.2 Reduction of Life Chances from Loss of Specific Symbolic Capital Via Land Loss—An Extension of the Ligature Concept and Specification of the Theory of Symbolic Capital 6 The Loss of Coastal Land in Mass Media Representation 6.1 The Function of the Mass Media 6.2 The Presence of Threats to the Louisiana Coast in Mass Media—An Overview of the Current State of Research 6.3 Social Media Communication of Threats to the Louisiana Coast—YouTube Video: “Grand Isle, La Drone Video of Hurricane Ida Damage Whole Island- Category 4 4k” Including Comments 6.4 Referencing Back to the Theoretical Framework 7 Terrestrial Marine Hybrids on the Louisiana Coast—A Phenomenological Access 7.1 The Phenomenological Walk—Some Basic Considerations 7.2 The Settlement 7.3 The Beach 8 Conclusion 8.1 The Five Extremes of Coastal Land Loss in Louisiana—And An Emerging Sixth 8.2 The Neopragmatic Framework of Horizontal Geographies of Coastal Land Loss 8.3 Possibilities and Constraints of the Neopragmatic Approach of Horizontal Geographies References