Dugan Meyer
My work is focused on critical geographic approaches to (in)security in the United States. I am especially interested in the infrastructural dimensions of police power, particularly the capacity of policing—as a spatial technology—to produce and shape social landscapes in a variety of contexts, from border regimes to housing markets to a range of affective economies.
I am currently collaborating with Colter Thomas on a project called “Infrastructures of Control: Visualizing Security and Surveillance in the U.S. Borderlands”. We do fieldwork research along the length of the U.S. border with Mexico to produce a visual archive of U.S. border security infrastructure. Guided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s publicly accessible map of U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance technologies—a map to which we are also contributing through our work—and other collaborations, we locate and study, through photography, mapping, and other methods, surveillance technologies and other forms of security infrastructure in a wide range of landscapes, from arid patches of desert to river deltas to small towns and bustling metropolises, residential backyards, public parks, college campuses, private ranches, military proving grounds, and more.
Some of my photographs from this project can be found on my website: duganmeyer.com. Some of Colter's photographs can be found on his website: colterthomas.com. You can read a short photo essay from our project in the Border Chronicle here (en español aquí), and a Q&A about what we do with Dave Maass of the Electronic Frontier Foundation here. Research is ongoing.
In April 2024, we organized an exhibition of work from our project in the courtyard of the ENR2 building on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson. The exhibition guide is available on the project website, infrastructuresofcontrol.com, and we will be adding materials to this website indefinitely as the project continues.
We collaborate with many others (maybe you?). Our work so far has been funded by the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry and the Mellon Foundation, as well as the W.A Franke Honors College; the Graduate & Professional Student Council; the School of Geography, Development & Environment; and the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona.
Other Projects:
I also have an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Stefano Bloch focusing on the racial and affective politics of white liberalism in the context of gentrification. You can find links to our work in the list of publications below.
I have previously worked with Drs. Mark Kear and Margaret Wilder—and others—on research exploring the economic, administrative, and affective borderscapes through which displacement is produced as an everyday fact of life for many residents of manufactured housing. You can find links to some of this work in the list of publications below.
Academic Publications:
Bloch S and Meyer D (2023) Displacement and affective economies in gentrification research. Dialogues in Urban Research 1(3): 248-251. Link: http://tinyurl.com/58t4paea
Kear M, Wilder MO, Martinez-Molina KG, McCann L, and Meyer D (2023) Home thermal security, energy equity and the social production of heat in manufactured housing. Energy Research & Social Science 106. Link: http://tinyurl.com/z75c794b
Bloch S and Meyer D (2023) Displacement beyond dislocation: An affective methodology for gentrification studies. Dialogues in Urban Research 1(3): 206–225. Link: http://tinyurl.com/5n7r9uut
Kear M, Meyer D, and Wilder M (2023) Real property supremacy: Manufactured housing and the limits of inclusion through finance. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113(8): 1900-1917. Link: http://tinyurl.com/2x9zbjre
Meyer D (2020) Security symptoms. cultural geographies 28(2): 271–284. Link: https://tinyurl.com/y84723y7
Bloch S and Meyer D (2019) Implicit revanchism: Gang injunctions and the security politics of white liberalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37(6): 1100-1118. Link: https://tinyurl.com/ybahdw49
Kear M, Handschuh T, Launius S, Hartman J, Meyer D, Christopherson G (2018) The "Manufactured Housing Gap" in Tucson and Pima County: Introduction and Preliminary Analysis. White Paper #12. Making Action Possible in Southern Arizona (MAP Dashboard). Link: https://tinyurl.com/yd3kvxp4