Archive of Refuge
Very minimal meta-data, but extensive oral histories:
https://archivderflucht.hkw.de/en/
The archvie is hosted on the Disaster STS Network: https://disaster-sts-network.org
Over time, members of the Design Group have collaborated with different partners and groups, thereby advancing understanding of who the audience for the archive is. Stakeholders include:
Social science and health researchers studying Formosa Plastics in different settings, for example (Chang-Chuan Chan, Wen-Ling Tu, and Paul Jobin (Taiwan) and Mei-Fang Fan (Vietnam), but also the community of environmental just scholars at large.
Students in the course Environmental Injustice
Lawyers and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits against Formosa, for example Philipe Larochelle or the Taiwan Environmental Rights Foundation
Journalists, especially producers of the Taiwanese environmental TV show Our Island (episodes available with English subtitles)
From the begining, the Formosa archive has been designed to support the transnational network of activists and researchers involved (see quote below).
Activists like Diane Wilson have been in touch with and traveling to Taiwan on multiple occasions (see 2010 Black Planet Award ceremony). The project began through a conversation about Wilson's data collection. Fieldwork in Taiwan led to the involvement of activist fishermen, researchers, journalists, and lawyers, which broadened my understanding of the community.
Eventually, I learned about the lively exchanges between campaigns against Formosa in Louisiana and Vietnam, partly enabled through increased use of Zoom and other video conferencing tools during the pandemic lockdown.
To deny state and local authorities the exclusive right to speak for them in the global and local marketplace, these representatives of civil society [anti-Formosa activists] have tapped into domestic opportunity structures, pro-actively and persistently deploying their limited organisational, legal and discursive resources. Upon their failure to stop investment agreements, [activists] have campaigned to prevent the projects’ completion or to enforce Formosa's adherence to environmental and labour regulations. Activists in Texas, Louisiana, Taiwan and beyond have gradually formed an exchange network, sharing information and learning from each other's successes and failures. While losing key battlegrounds in Texas, they have successfully forced Formosa to abort its expansion plans in Louisiana in the 1990s and currently seek to derail the ‘Sunshine Project’. They have also damaged the electoral prospects of selected subnational politicians associated with or supportive of Formosa. Under their pressure, Louisiana's state government has scaled back the state's generous tax exemption scheme.
In their conflict over Formosa Plastics, subnational state and non-state actors have purposefully built relationships with foreign counterparts. The former have connected with Taiwanese authorities, defining Taiwan as an economic opportunity and ‘beacon of freedom’, thus infusing their international action with normative and geopolitical dimensions. The latter have reached out to Taiwanese environmental activists, further validating the construction of Taiwan as a free and open society. Sub-state agents’ keen awareness of opportunities and threats foreign actors pose to their contests over paradiplomacy and foreign governments’ recognition of US states as international actors unequivocally bring subnational diplomacy into the realm of ‘high politics’. (Tubilewicz 2021)
I first became interested in data sharing through fieldwork with open data and free software movements in Europe. In Germany, groups like the Chaos Computer Club and Open Knowledge Foundation play important roles to debates about civic technology and increasingly work in consulting roles for political parties. In turn, I became interested in the role of digital infrastructure in and for public anthropology -- what Jiminez (2021) calls "wild archives".
I have experience designing WordPress and Jekyll websites. Through PECE, I have learned how to work with Drupal-based content management systems.
I also have a background in digital video and audio production. Most recently, I worked on a short video about soil lead contamination in Santa Ana, California. Since 2021, I am co-assitant producer for the documentary film Red Sea: Vietnam's Modern Disaster.
My early ethnographic researched focused on the design of digital infrastructure in refugee shelters in Germany. I have also collaborated with researchers in informatics to develop so-called cultural probes for participatory technology design with elderly citizens. In 2019 I co-organized ethnographic field campuses in St. Louis, Missouri and New Orleans, Louisiana, and carried out field research in Port Arthur, Texas. In 2020-21, I did preliminary fieldwork in Taiwan, focusing on Formosa Plastics plant communities in Yunlin County and Kaohsiung.
The Formosa archive is organized around PECE essays for specific Formosa plants (e.g. Formosa Point Comfort) and counties (e.g. Calhoun County). Within these essays, there are collections that focus on themes (ethylene oxide) but also stakeholders ("Fishing Futures" is an essay to support activist fishermen).
One reason for the ongoing expansion of Formosa's global operations is the boom in oil and shale gas since 2014, enabled by new unconventional extractive technologies. In turn, we decided to add the Fracking Boom as substantive logic for the development of the Formosa Archive.
A related thread (or threat) to watch is Formosa Plastics' ongoing import of Russian oil and discussion about an embargo in Taiwan.