Lexicon

The contemporary abolitionist movement refers to the dismantling of the ‘prison-industrial complex’ (PIC) - comprising “overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems” (Critical Resistance, 2023). PIC abolition is centrally concerned with breaking cycles of violence, making legible where carcerality acts and is reproduced in proposed solutions to violence. Crucially, though, PIC abolition commits to being in perpetual practice of “rehears[ing] the social order coming into being” (Wilson Gilmore & Gilroy, 2020).

When abolition principles of non-punitive systems of care are applied to wider justice movements, abolition gives space for epistemic freedom in justice for our communities. We can’t imagine our freedom through the frames of dominant entities who do not experience pollution outcomes or consider our experiences as justified knowledge.

At its core, “[a]bolition ecology [seeks] to build intuitions and processes that are explicitly focused on the political ecological imperatives of access to fresh air, clean water, sufficient land, amelioration of toxic chemicals, and beyond.” The term abolition ecologies draws its inspiration from W.E.B. Dubois’s concept of abolition democracy as set out in the Black Reconstruction in America (1935), and that of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s abolition geographies.

Biological inequity, also known as biological inequality, refers to “systematic, unfair, and avoidable stress-related biological differences which increase risk of disease, observed between social groups of a population”.

The term aims to unify societal factors with the biological underpinnings of health inequities – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status and risks between social groups of a population - such that these inequalities can be investigated in a holistic manner.

Biological inequity posits that health inequity in urban populations is a result of structurally racist and marginalisation processes executed through the built environment. Specifically, particular social groups are disproportionately exposed to physical and psychosocial stressors in the urban environment.

Biological inequity increases the risk of disease and poor health outcomes for a social group through;

1. disproportionate exposure to the cause(s) of the disease brought about by direct exposure to physical and/or psychosocial stressors, or

2. greater adverse effects of the cause(s) of a disease brought about from accumulated stress-related biological differences i.e. higher levels of allostatic load.

A practical framework for accumulation of privately owned capital, by any means necessary, for the sole purposes of owning capital and creating, and maintaining, a social hierarchy. Not a democratic participation within an economy.

Ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environments, including the systems that shape and inform them. When we use the term ecological we refer to the inherently interconnected and interdependent nature of life. These links are not abstract or ideological, but tangible and embedded within us and our relationships. Our understanding of ecology is not only the relationships within the natural environment, ecology is also the social, political, economic and cultural systems that were formed from histories of extractivism and domination.

Ecological models of health, similar to Indigenous models, situates health as a balanced interplay between Nature and individual with emphasis on human health acting reciprocally with planetary health. Taking an ecological approach to health necessitates the idea that the state of health is the result of a constant negotiation between the human and their environment. Building on the definition of ecology, the built, social, and political environments are included in this negotiation.

Epistemic justice is the idea that everyone should have the right to access knowledge and participate in the creation of knowledge. It also involves ensuring that knowledge is distributed fairly and that everyone's voice is considered equally. This is due to the epistemic genocide created by colonialism that deliberately strips people of cognitive products such as language and thus facilitating the extermination of that People’s knowledges and roots of Knowledges. 

Our working definition:

the creation of infrastructure for Peoples who have directly experienced structural violence to autonomously create pathways to repair and fortify community health.

The Healing Commons refers to a set of existing and historical movements that are walking towards health and ecological justice through a shared vision of Kinship that is egalitarian by principle and in solidarity with the Land. Contributing work to the commons means that all movements are connected and balance working in unison and autonomously, as needed.

We are using this term to refer to Peoples who are the Ancestral inhabitants of Lands colonised by Europeans and other groups seeking to establish settler-colonial nation-states.  Therefore, it is not tied to one experience, race, culture or ethnicity. Through colonisation and the establishment of settler-colonial nation-states, Indigenous Peoples have experienced continual genocide, slavery, and displacement. Despite this Indigenous Peoples continue to evolve and exist on Indigenous territories worldwide- “we are still here”. Indigenous persecution and colonisation continue to be enacted due to the advancement of capitalism and the occupation of Ancestral Lands. The term Indigenous is contentious and problematic for many reasons, firstly, it’s rooted in European epistemologies, which aim to divide and “other”. In the Americas, it has been used to distinguish between those kidnapped from Africa, white europeans settlers/colonisers/criminals and those birthed from the Soils of Turtle Island and Abya Yala. This distinction has not only created racialisation, it has also seeded Anti-Blackness within Indigeneity, which this project wholly rejects- we are Pro-Black.

Secondly, it is a term that identifies us from an ego-centric and white-gaze perspective. Erasing our Beigness and state of relation with our Lands. As Aymara scholar, Yaneth Katia Apaza Huanca puts it “Being an Aymara is not the same as being an Indian, an Indigenous people, a peasant, an ethnic group or a nation, all of which are abstract identities that anonymise”. Thirdly, not all Peoples who fit under the definition of Indigenous use this term to self-identify, therefore, it cannot be used as a blanket term for all Peoples. Given its problems and limitations, we are using the term loosely and with the acknowledgement that many might reject this term. Moreover, this project may one day move completely from this term as our Knowledges and decolonisation move forward.

This is a term identified by Centric Lab to define a knowledge pool that self-identifies as supreme to systematically dictate the knowledges that are valuable, trusted, and acknowledged, resulting in hegemonic policies that affect our health.

Within knowledge supremacy there are 4 pathways in which people are erased through the use of science and data.

• The denial of self-reported community data due to “reliability”.

• Hiding behind data; “we need more data” or saying “this is not the right kind of data” without providing any information or resources in order to achieve the ideal format in the first place.

• Making inaccurate data correlations to justify inaction.

• Refusing to accept “low” numbers of people involved as a sufficient evidence base that something is wrong.

Acknowledging that "Indigenous" might not be a universally used term by all Peoples, we are also using the term Land-Kinned Peoples (LKP). This is a working term for this project to bring a non-western gaze or allocentric term into the ether. Kinned, meaning a deep relationality to the Great Creators (Land, Water, Air) as well as our relations to each other as Peoples. It aims to be a more inclusive word, whilst still acknowledging the settler-colonial experience faced by our Peoples. Kinned is also in a verb format, which allows us to acknowledge that relations are a practice or action not just an identity. As it is a  working term, it will evolve as this project collides with further Imaginations and Knowledges.

Living Knowledges is a realm where knowledge finds a sanctuary to flourish, evolve, and expand beyond the confines of conventional repositories. It is a dynamic space dedicated to storing and nurturing knowledge in a manner that allows it to adapt, transform, and grow with the passage of time.

Placemaking is not an outcome, it is a process. There is merit in retaining the term placemaking, however if it is given greater definition, or perhaps expansion. For example, there can easily be three categories of placemaking:

1. Place-making: Where no existing cultural and human habitation exists and an intentional plan can be put in place to support the development of a diverse, inclusive, and cohesive community life; 

2. Place-shaping: Where there are existing, nascent cultural dynamics in a given area that can benefit from co-designed plans to support the cultural development of an area through the built environment; 

3. Place-listening: Where a deep historical relationship between the communities of people and the built environment exists a lighter approach is taken to respect traditions and cultures. The built environment interventions/market influences are responsive rather than directional.

It is the dysregulation of planetary ecosystems due to the systemic contamination of Soil, Water, and Air that is driven by capital generation. Planetary dysregulation leads to changes and or death of biodiversity, which in turn leads to changes in climatic systems.

The idea of race cannot be supported by physiology as there are no biological markers for race. Therefore the concept of race is strictly a sociocultural product. More specifically it is a concept that has been used for over 400 years to make decisions about every aspect of governance. Such as who is chosen to live in highly polluted areas, whose bodily autonomy is degraded, who is unable to access healthcare, who is chosen to live in inadequate housing, and so on. In a society that is organised and governed by supremacy ideologies, methods, strategies, and processes identifiers have to be created to deliberately choose who suffers and who has less.

Race is one of these identifiers, therefore, when we report about the consequences of this type of governance, we use the term "racialised". This term is used to identify not the "race" of the person, which is a violent and illegitimate, but the experience that this identifier creates. 

The racialised experience gerates the poor health outcomes we research in our lab. Being "Black" does not put you at risk for disease or the genes that makes a person inherently at risk of certain disease. It is the racialised experience, which changes your genes and your physiology that puts a person at risk of certain diseases. This is so important, so we do not communicate justice work using racists ideology. 

This definition is analogues to class, gender, and disabilities. 

Racism “as an epistemological system – an epistemic frame that serves as the foundation for how we understand and interact with the world. The difficulty in dismantling an epistemological system lies in its resilience – a system’s capacity to resist change to its underlying structure while, at the same time, offering the appearance of large-scale reform.” - Briana Toole 

In Postcolonial Theory, “Subaltern” describes people in the lower social classes and the Other social groups that are displaced and marginalized while also living in an imperial colony. Subaltern communities, rather than sharing any set of specific cultural or phenotypic features, are classified by their inaccessibility to social mobility or equitable voicing and representation of themselves in the society in which they are located, leading to marginalisation and systemic injustice.

A hierarchical system that upholds human intelligence above all others. It strives for the removal of the "Beingness" of those who do not fit within their systems, including Peoples, Soil, Water, and Air. It centres power and wealth over health, justice and dignity. Divides Peoples and separates Peoples from Nature. The invention and propagation of injustice. It erases the existence of other epistemologies and realities.

It is the aggregation and continual evolution of Knowledges that belong to Indigenous and Land-Kinned Peoples that are rooted in Kinship, mutualistic symbiosis, relationality, and reciprocity. We acknowledge that the word "traditional" poses a temporal limitation, meaning that it can denote that the knowledges are not-evolving or in-tune with the continual changes experienced in ecosystems.

The visioning, managing, and developing of the systems that underpin urban environments such as physical elements of transport, green spaces, housing, common spaces, zoning, water, sewage, roads, streets, hygiene, and organisational structures such as politics, governance, and research.