Mark Whitehead

State, Science and the Skies

Governmentalities of the British Atmosphere

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Contemporary concerns regarding climate change, the destruction of the ozone layer, and increased anxieties of the health risks associated with particulate air pollution, highlight the crucial importance of understanding what is happening in our atmosphere. This timely volume asserts that to comprehend contemporary atmospheric knowledge systems requires an examination of the spatial histories of the sciences and political regimes that have shaped systems of air government. Focusing exclusively on the UK, the volume weaves together the tales of 19th-century urban smoke observers, early 20th-century visitors to clean-air exhibitions, and modern atmospheric scientists in order to reveal why we know certain things about the qualities of the air we breathe and how this knowledge has shaped collective relations with the atmosphere. In charting this history this volume combines Foucauldian-inspired accounts of the history of government with relevant works on the sociology of scientific knowledge. Utilizing extensive archival materials and informed by scholarly analysis, this groundbreaking work presents the first historical account of the development of a state science of atmospheric pollution.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 296
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. September 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 150mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 417g
• ISBN-13: 9781405191739
• ISBN-10: 1405191732
• Artikelnr.: 31706686

Autorenporträt

Mark Whitehead is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University; and Senior Research Fellow at the City Institute, York University, Toronto. His published works include Spaces of Sustainability: Geographical Perspectives on the Sustainable Society (2006); and The Nature of the State: Excavating the Political Ecologies of the Modern State (co-author, 2007).

Inhaltsangabe

List of Figures and Tables.
Series Editors' Preface.
Preface.
Acknowledgements.
List of Abbreviations.
1 Introduction: Space, History and the Governing of Air Pollution.
2 Historical Geographies of Science and Government: Exploring the Apparatus
of Atmospheric Knowledge Acquisition.
3 Science, Sight and the Optics of Air Government 37
4 Governing Air Conduct: Exhibition, Examination and the Cultivation of the
Atmospheric Self.
5 Instrumentation and the Sites of Atmospheric Monitoring.
6 A National Census of the Air: Spatial Science, Calculation and the
Geo-Coding of the Atmosphere.
7 Automating the Air: Atmospheric Simulations and Digital Beings.
8 Environmental Governmentalities and the Ecological Coding of the British
Atmosphere.
9 Conclusion: Learning Like a State in an Age of Atmospheric Change.
Notes.
References.
Index.

Rezensionen

"Mark Whitehead's 2009 book State, Science and theSkies constitutes a compelling and important contribution to theRGS-IBG Book Series . . . This fascinating book is part of anincreasing literature on a much neglected area of study: the roleand importance of the atmosphere in our lives (e.g. Jankovic, 2000;Latour, 2003; Strauss and Orlove, 2003; Kessel, 2006; Thornes,2008) . . . State, Science and the Skies should provide us with animportant guide to the geographies of the atmosphere. It isespecially helpful in order to cultivate some sense of relief toSloterdijk's (2009) emphasis on the air as a means ofadministering death through environmental means." (Geoform, 1 September 2012)State, Science and the Skies is a carefully researched andpolitically important work. Creatively developing Foucault's workon governmentality, it shows the complex interrelations oftechnology, policy and practice. Taking the atmosphere as an objectof government, it insists on the essential vertical dimension ofthe geographies of the modern state.
-- Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Geography,Durham University

State, Science and the Skies is a superbly craftedsynthesis of the making of a modern climatological state. Whiteheadfollows the expert and the state in their creation of atmosphericgovernment and its aerial responsibilities. Blending a robusthistorical narrative with thought-provoking analyses of atmosphericlives of boiler attendants, employers, government inspectors andhousewives, Whitehead provides an important framework for thinkingabout the current concerns surrounding climate change and airpollution. State, Science and the Skies is bound to become amajor reference in all future discussions about the scientific andpolitical constructions of environmental life in modern Britain andbeyond.
-- Vladimir Jankovic, Lecturer, Centre for theHistory of Science, Technology and Medicine University ofManchester