A total of 10 papers were submitted for consideration for the 2020 Mullins Prize, 9 from the US and 1 from Australia, representing a wide range of methods, topics, and fields of STS research. All papers were reviewed by all members of the prize committee, and assessed according to three criteria: 1) theoretical depth, innovativeness and sophistication, 2) quality of the empirical work (being both sound and generative), 3) contributions to the field of STS beyond the particulars of the case study. After an individual round of assessing papers, evaluations were amalgamated and the top four papers were reviewed again and discussed at length.
After extensive deliberation and a difficult selection process out of a strong set of truly excellent papers, the committee is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2020 Nicholas C. Mullins Award is Daniel G. Cumming, for his paper, Black Gold, White Power: Mapping Oil, Real Estate, and Racial Segregation in the Los Angeles Basin, 1900-1939, published in 2018 by Engaging Science, Technology, and Society.
Working at the intersections of history, STS and critical geography, Cumming analyses how, in the LA Basin, the social production of ‘natural’ resources, the political exclusions that follow from extractive technologies, and the practices used by states and corporations to mine the underground while constructing metropolitan inequality on the surface together have infrastructured racial segregation both above and below the ground. Through careful archival work and using extremely illustrative maps, Cumming shows how this historical development of ‘redlining’ entire neighborhoods as high-risk areas for mortgages, and the material landscape of oil mining are not only deeply entwined, but produce social and health inequalities for generations down the line – and are even perpetuated today through novel extraction technologies. Cumming’s careful scholarship is exemplary in highlighting how studies of technosciences of the underground and of extractivist economies provide depth – literally – to current debates around structural racism: racism goes vertical in Los Angeles, and studies regarding the processes of gentrification, or STS work on how markets are made can clearly benefit from the infrastructured understanding Cumming provides. By showing that white supremacy’s commitment to extraction runs deep and that it is crucial that scholars examine underlying conditions that reproduce racial inequality above ground the paper also implicitly poses a challenge to the interdiscipline of STS to explore what it would entail to undo structural racism.
The 2020 Mullins Prize committee consisted of: Gloria Baigorrotegui, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, (past Council Member); Anita Say Chan, iSchool, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA (past Council Member); Teun Zuiderent-Jerak, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Council Member, Chair).
I am very honored to receive the 2020 Nicolas C. Mullins Award for my paper, Black Gold, White Power: Mapping Oil, Real Estate, and Racial Segregation in the Los Angeles Basin, 1900-1939. This paper was part of a thematic collection published in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, titled Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation. The effort was led by Abby J. Kinchy, Roopali Phadke, and Jessica M. Smith, and I greatly appreciate the opportunity they provided me to publish alongside their work. In particular, I owe a great debt to Robyn d’Avignon, who introduced me to the group and provided crucial support at each stage of the process. I would also like to acknowledge generous feedback from several readers, including Andrew Needham, Maria Montoya, Martha Hodes, fellow graduate students at New York University, and the editorial team at Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. Lastly, I would like to thank the 4S organization for their support and commitment to graduate student research.
For an interesting Backchannels article on the paper, please see: https://www.4sonline.org/blog/post/black_gold_white_power_an_interview_with_daniel_g._cumming
Daniel Cumming is completing a Ph.D. in U.S. History at New York University. He researches the twentieth-century metropolis and examines the intersections of natural and built environments, health, racism, and capitalism. His dissertation examines Baltimore’s toxic legacy as the city shifted its economic base from factories to hospitals in the postwar era, entrenching racial apartheid in the process and transforming families’ lives in the wake. He is a 2020-21 National Fellow at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, as well as a dissertation fellow at the Hagley Museum and Library and a research fellow at the National Library of Medicine. His early research was supported by the Maryland Historical Society.
The Mullins Prize is awarded annually for exemplary graduate student scholarship in Science and Technology Studies as represented in a published article or chapter, or article-length unpublished manuscript. Maximum length of texts including notes is 10,000 words. Authors must be currently enrolled as graduate students; texts authored by multiple graduate students are eligible; texts authored with a faculty mentor are not eligible. Articles or chapters must be published in English or newly appearing in translation during the eligibility period. Articles and chapters with publication dates in 2018, 2019, and 2020 are eligible to be nominated in 2020 for the 2021 prize. Nominations may be made by any 4S member (including author self-nominations), and by editors of journals.