Starting with Sarinah, Indonesia's first and most iconic mall, this essay analyzes the rise and development of shopping malls from being a symbol of national modernity to becoming an emblem of spatial exclusion.

The essay captures some aspects of urban violence in Lebanon and constructs their spatialities. Stories of struggle and creative coping strategies amidst the multiple crises in Lebanon constitute ‘living archives’. They expand the meaning and imaginaries of everyday life, link between a shared past and present reality, and transform the urban space.

As a perspective and a praxis, Red Natural History urges those of us who take the side of the common to see ourselves as part of the storm that arrives from the past, not to produce chaos, but to rupture the status quo, draw capitalism’s structural violence and injustices into the open, and orient our struggles for a livable and egalitarian future for all. 

NAA is working with Indigenous and non-Indigenous theorists, historians, ethnobotanists, geographers, landscape architects, artists, and activists to define and organize around a counter-tradition of natural history, a Red Natural History, which sees the world not as a wealth of natural resources available for possession or profit, but as a world in common that cannot be enclosed. This first text situates this inquiry within NAA’s history of practice, telling the story of how we came to believe it is necessary to name and organize around an alternate tradition of natural history. The second delves into the question at hand, sketching out our collective’s provisional definition of Red Natural History.

In the context of intense debate regarding the relationship between race and capitalism – and the usefulness of formulations like “racial capitalism” – William Conroy suggests a way forward through the lexicon of uneven and combined development.