Abstract
This paper is a brief stream of thought on the function of encampments in the United States during the 20th century. This work derives directly from my still-in-progress dissertation, “The Age of Encampment: Race, Surveillance, and the Power of Spatial Scripts, 19331950.” The dissertation charts a history of the creation of federally-funded camps and their lasting legacies beginning with the creation of New Deal-era liberal policies through the incarceration of enemies of the state during WWII. By revealing the history of federally-funded encampments in the US, I argue that camp spaces were racialized and classist projects dependent on a pathologized “other.” Further, the materialization of camp spaces became a tool used by the US government to surveille bodies deemed threatening to the local community and/or nation-state – a theory I call “spatial scripts.”
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