Article ID: CBB938785365

Political airs: From monitoring to attuned sensing air pollution (June 2018)

unapi

Calvillo, Nerea (Author)


Social Studies of Science
Volume: 48
Issue: 3
Pages: 372-388


Publication Date: June 2018
Edition Details: Special Issue: Toxic Politics -- guest edited by Nerea Calvillo, Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi and Nicole Nelson
Language: English

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 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.

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Article Max Liboiron; Manuel Tironi; Nerea Calvillo (June 2018) Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world. Social Studies of Science (pp. 331-349). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB938785365/

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Authors & Contributors
Alexander Bogner
Jerry C. Zee
David Demortain
Halvorson, Charles
Franco Sotte
Élise Tancoigne
Concepts
Science and politics
Legislative and administrative regulations
Agriculture
Science and law
Science and government
Environmentalism
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
20th century, early
Places
European Union
Madrid (Spain)
United States
Spain
Europe
Sweden
Institutions
United States. Environmental Protection Agency
European Spallation Source (ESS)
Residencia de Estudiantes (Madrid)
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
United States. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA)
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