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Political airs : from monitoring to attuned sensing air pollution
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Calvillo, Nerea (2018) Political airs : from monitoring to attuned sensing air pollution. Social Studies of Science, 48 (3). pp. 372-388. doi:10.1177/0306312718784656 ISSN 0306-3127.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312718784656
Abstract
In Madrid, as in many European cities, air pollution is known about and made accountable through techno-scientific monitoring processes based on data, and the toxicity of the air is defined through epidemiological studies and made political through policy. In 2009, Madrid’s City Council changed the location of its air quality monitoring stations without notice, reducing the average pollution of the city and therefore provoking a public scandal. This scandal challenged the monitoring process, as the data that used to be the evidence of pollution could not be relied on anymore. To identify the characteristics of some of the diverse forms of public’s participation that emerged, I route theories of environmental sensing from STS and feminist theory through the notion of attuned sensing. Reading environmental sensing through the processual and orientational processes of attunement expands the ways in which toxicity can be sensed outside of quantitative data. This mode of sensing recognizes how the different spontaneous attunements to and with air pollution and the scandal acknowledged Madrid’s chemical infrastructure, rendering visible qualitative conditions of toxicity. This mode of sensing politicized the toxicity of the air not through management or policy making, nor only through established forms environmental activism, but through contagion and accumulation of the different forms of public participation. All together, they made air pollution a matter of public concern. They also redistributed the actors, practices and objects that make the toxicity not only knowable, but also accountable, and most importantly, they opened up spaces for citizen intervention.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Air -- Pollution -- Madrid (Spain), Environmentalism -- Madrid (Spain), Toxicity testing -- Social aspects -- Madrid (Spain) | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Social Studies of Science | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0306-3127 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 June 2018 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 48 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 372-388 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/0306312718784656 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | Calvillo, N. (2018). Political airs: From monitoring to attuned sensing air pollution. Social Studies of Science, 48(3), 372–388. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312718784656 Copyright © 2018 The Author. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 2 July 2018 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 23 October 2018 |
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