Assistant Professor, Michigan State University
Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
About Lucero
I am an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Michigan State University. My research focuses on the intersections of water rights and infrastructure, the science and micropolitics of climate change, and urbanization in Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Through my work I also seek to expand the methods toolkit for social science research in human-environmental relations through engagement in interdisciplinary collaborations and methodological innovation.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Lucero's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
This House Harvests the Rain: Multiple Waters and Infrastructure in a Changing Climate
Seventy-five year-old Mary-Jean climbs up on a short ladder to clear the fruit from her rain gutters. “The gutter likes grapefruit, and they like to plug the little hole where the water goes,” she explains, referring to the opening between the gutters and the downspout. The aluminum downspout drains the rainwater that falls on her roof into an 1100-gallon plastic cistern sitting in her backyard. She has two cisterns, and in early September they are halfway full, fed by the summer monsoon rains. Her yard is sparsely landscaped with reddish gravel and a handful of native trees and succulents. If she were not collecting the rain, she would be sweeping the gravel from the street back to the yard after every heavy rain. “It really slows down the water,” she tells me referring to the runoff and pointing to her front yard and steep driveway. The grapefruit tree came with (read more...)