ABSTRACT
The assemblage of the Chicago Area Waterways System (CAWS), including the collection of invasive species known as Asian carp, offers a way to understand how the varied properties and capacities of water have shaped and continue to shape the City of Chicago and the region around it. Assemblage theory has the potential to help us understand the complex workings of urban environmental systems made up of human and non-human elements, including points of policy intervention and spaces of urban politics. The concept of assemblage has been employed by geographers and other urban researchers in a variety of fields from architecture to urban policy. The reassembly of the CAWS may have as much to do with continuing to enable the circulation of capital as it does with keeping fish from circulating through the region's waterways, demonstrating how ecological spaces are also spaces of urban politics.
