State, Science and the Skies E-Book

Mark Whitehead

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Serie: RGS-IBG Book Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 565

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Utilizing environmental archival materials from the UK, State, Science and the Skies presents a groundbreaking historical account of the development of a state science of atmospheric pollution.

• Offers the most extensive historical and geographical account of atmospheric government and pollution in Britain, available today
• Presents archival material from 150 years of British history that represents an original contribution to our knowledge of the history of science and government
• Develops an innovative combination of Foucauldian history of government with a history of atmospheric science
• Raises crucial questions about the nature of state/science relations and the conditions under which environmental knowledge is produced

Leseprobe

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Series Editors’ Preface

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Chapter One Introduction: Space, History and the Governing of Air Pollution

On 700 Years of Air Government

Unpacking the Politics of Air Pollution Science and Government

Conceptual Parameters: Spatial Histories and Atmospheric Geographies

Timeframes and Conceptual Enclosures: On the Structure of the Book

Chapter Two Historical Geographies of Science and Government: Exploring the Apparatus of Atmospheric Knowledge Acquisition

‘Men of Science’ and the Genesis of British Atmospheric Government

Atmospheric Governmentalities and Scientific Power: Tracing the Knowledge Effects of Government with Science

Histories of Scientific Knowledge, Practice and Technology

Conclusions: On Histories and Crises of Political and Governmental Rationality

Chapter Three Science, Sight and the Optics of Air Government

Mr Bloor’s Journey: A Day in the Life of a Smoke Observer

Modernity, Sight and the Calibration of the Observing Eye

Nuisance Inspectors and the Constitution of the Legislative Gaze: Between Atmospheric Truth and Atmospheric Proof

Meat, Lodgings and the Sky: From the Generic Gaze to Specialist Air Observation

Between Science and Supervision: Coding the Eye and sub rosa Observations

Conclusion: On the Changing Nature of the Atmospheric Gaze

Chapter Four Governing Air Conduct: Exhibition, Examination and the Cultivation of the Atmospheric Self

Exhibition Spaces, Gendered Practices and the Atmospheric Responsibilities of the British Home

Recasting Workplace Conduct: Boilers and the Stoker as Scientist

Conclusions – On the Nature of Atmospheric Government and Personal Conduct

Chapter Five Instrumentation and the Sites of Atmospheric Monitoring

Technological Deployments, ‘Normal Air’ and the Appointment of the Committee for the Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution

Networking Instruments in Space: On the First Instrument-Based Survey of British Air Pollution

Technological Innovations, Suspended Pollution Monitoring and the Rise of Forensic Governmentalities

Coda: From Governing Things to Governing Through Things

Chapter Six A National Census of the Air: Spatial Science, Calculation and the Geo-Coding of the Atmosphere

The Spatial Expansion of Air Pollution Monitoring in Britain

Air Pollution and the British Military Establishment: Vertical Territorialities and the Second World War

Space, Volume and the Calculation of the British Atmosphere

Conclusion: Governmental Rationality and Spatial Epistemology

Chapter Seven Automating the Air: Atmospheric Simulations and Digital Beings

Reviewing the National Air Pollution Survey and the ‘Environmental Revolution’ in British Government

Automation, Digitisation and the Birth of the Real-Time Atmosphere

Changing Modes of Atmospheric Conduct in a Digital Age

Conclusions

Chapter Eight Environmental Governmentalities and the Ecological Coding of the British Atmosphere

Introduction: Ecology in an Age of Governmental Revolution

Ecopower and the Atmosphere as a Site for Ecological Government

Holistic Sciences and Integrated Government: On the Institutionalisation of Ecological Thought

Ecological Science and the Changing Techniques of Atmospheric Government in the UK

Conclusion – Reflections on an Environmental Revolution

Chapter Nine Conclusion: Learning Like a State in an Age of Atmospheric Change

Concluding Reasons and Reasons of Conclusion

Analytical Themes: Atmospheric Government in Critical Prospect and Retrospect

Learning Like a State in an Age of Climate Change

Notes

References

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

UNPUBLISHED SOURCES

PUBLISHED PAMPHLETS, CIRCULARS, GUIDES AND HANDBOOKS

PUBLISHED BOOKS, ARTICLES AND REPORTS

Index

RGS-IBG Book Series

Published

State, Science and the Skies: Governmentalities of the British Atmosphere

Mark Whitehead

Complex Locations: Women’s Geographical Work in the UK 1850–1970

Avril Maddrell

Value Chain Struggles: Institutions and Governance in the Plantation Districts of South India

Jeff Neilson and Bill Pritchard

Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town

Andrew Tucker

Arsenic Pollution: A Global Synthesis

Peter Ravenscroft, Hugh Brammer and Keith Richards

Resistance, Space and Political Identities: The Making of Counter-Global Networks

David Featherstone

Mental Health and Social Space: Towards Inclusionary Geographies?

Hester Parr

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerability

Georgina H. Endfield

Geochemical Sediments and Landscapes

Edited by David J. Nash and Sue J. McLaren

Driving Spaces: A Cultural-Historical Geography of England’s M1 Motorway

Peter Merriman

Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics and Urban Policy

Mustafa Dikeç

Geomorphology of Upland Peat: Erosion, Form and Landscape Change

Martin Evans and Jeff Warburton

Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities

Stephen Legg

People/States/Territories

Rhys Jones

Publics and the City

Kurt Iveson

After the Three Italies: Wealth, Inequality and Industrial Change

Mick Dunford and Lidia Greco

Putting Workfare in Place

Peter Sunley, Ron Martin and Corinne Nativel

Domicile and Diaspora

Alison Blunt

Geographies and Moralities

Edited by Roger Lee and David M. Smith

Military Geographies

Rachel Woodward

A New Deal for Transport?

Edited by Iain Docherty and Jon Shaw

Geographies of British Modernity

Edited by David Gilbert, David Matless and

Brian Short

Lost Geographies of Power

John Allen

Globalizing South China

Carolyn L. Cartier

Geomorphological Processes and Landscape Change: Britain in the Last 1000 Years

Edited by David L. Higgitt and E. Mark Lee

Forthcoming

Aerial Geographies: Mobilities, Subjects, Spaces

Peter Adey

Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption

Clive Barnett, Paul Cloke, Nick Clarke and Alice Malpass

Living Through Decline: Surviving in the Places of the Post-Industrial Economy

Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson

Swept-Up Lives? Re-envisaging ‘the Homeless City’

Paul Cloke, Sarah Johnsen and Jon May

Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines David Ley

In the Nature of Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk Broads

David Matless

Transnational Learning: Knowledge, Development and the North-South Divide

Colin McFarlane

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism: Social Exclusion and Spaces of Economic Practice in Post Socialism

Adrian Smith, Alison Stenning, Alena Rochovská and Dariusz witek

This edition first published 2009

© 2009 Mark Whitehead

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Whitehead, Mark, 1975–

State, science, and the skies: governmentalities of the British atmosphere/Mark Whitehead.

p. cm. – (RGS-IBG book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-9174-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-9173-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Air-Pollution–Government policy–Great Britain. 2. Air quality–Government policyGreat Britain. 3. Science and state–Great Britain. I. Title.

TD883.7.G7W45 2009

363.739′2560941–dc22

2009004219

For Anwen Mair Whitehead (born 12th November 2008)

Figures and Tables

FIGURES

3.1Air motion and the supervision of the furnace3.2London County Council (a) smoke consumption form and (b) smoke diagram4.1The enlightened home. Photograph of visitors attending the 1910 Glasgow Clean Air Exhibition4.2The St Mungo’s fireplace exhibit at the 1910 Glasgow Clean Air Exhibition with female attendant4.3A smokeless kitchen exhibit produced by the Corporation’s Gas Department at the 1910 Glasgow Clean Air Exhibition5.1The deposit gauge5.2Standard deposit gauge locations in Sheffield for 1914 air pollution survey5.3The Owens filter apparatus5.4The tintometer5.5The Owens jet dust counter5.6Record of country air of Surrey taken by jet dust counter showing crystals from a dried-up stream bed6.1Map showing location of ACAP members in 19306.2A London police officer directing traffic during the smog of December 19526.3An un-named analyst employed by the government’s Atmospheric Pollution Research Committee reveals the levels of pollution that were afflicting London in the 1950s. Here the assistant is revealing the air pollution deposits left on the filter of an air-conditioning plant in 1954. The London fog disaster brought the work of the Atmospheric Pollution Research Committee under critical scrutiny6.4Final report of the National Air Pollution Survey, Volume 3 (Warren Spring Laboratory)7.1Automated air quality monitoring station, Centenary Square, Birmingham

TABLES

3.1Summary of Glasgow Sanitary Inspector’s Eighteenth Annual Report, year ending 31 December 18873.2Summary of legal prosecutions brought by Birmingham’s nuisance inspector between September 1856 and September 18573.3Summary of Mr Bolton’s smoke observations from Broad Street, Birmingham (20 March-1 April 1873)3.4Day 1 observations of smoke pollution from chimneys A-C in Police District A (27 January 1841)4.1Catalogue list (with numbers) of exhibits at the 1936 Smoke Abatement Exhibition (London) concerned with ‘Smoke and its Effects’4.2Catalogue list (with numbers) of exhibits at the 1936 Smoke Abatement Exhibition (London) concerned with the ‘Measurement of Smoke and Pollution’4.3Specimen examination paper for first-year stoker as devised by Ernest Dickinson5.1Original members of the Committee for the Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution (1912)5.2List of CIAP gauge locations, numbers and analysts (1914)5.3CIAP report form (1914)5.4Abridged ‘monthly means of several elements of pollution’ as recorded in the first survey of the CIAP6.1Members of the SCCB’s Working Group of the National Air Pollution Survey6.2Number of towns sampled of designated size within the National Air Pollution Survey up to end of March 19666.3Domestic coal consumption and average smoke concentrations in the atmosphere – National Air Pollution Survey7.1Emission types mapped by the NAEI7.2Air pollution types and weather conditions associated with high pollution episodes in the UK7.3Air pollution bandings deployed by the UK for pollution forecast warnings7.4Hourly averages air pollution data for Walsall (Willenhall), UK Air Quality Archive8.1Ecosystems for which critical load data are currently calculated

Series Editors’ Preface

The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The Series places strong emphasis on theoretically informed and empirically strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories.

For details on how to submit a proposal please visit: www.rgsbookseries.com

Kevin Ward

University of Manchester, UK

Joanna Bullard

Loughborough University, UK

RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Preface

My interest in atmospheric government was kindled in 2003 when I came across the British government’s Air Quality Archive. The Air Quality Archive is partly overseen by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and provides an online, real-time record of air pollution for urban and rural Britain. Three things in particular struck me about this fascinating fragment of cyberspace. First, was the very notion of an archive of the air. Throughout much of modern history, archives, of many different kinds, have provided key ordering devices for scientists and bureaucrats intent on recording different aspects of the natural and social worlds. Yet there was something incongruous about the notion of an air archive: juxtaposing as it does the rigid ordering technologies of the modern world with that most dynamic, fleeting and perpetually mobile of compounds. Was it an attempt to order an unorderable? The second aspect of this air archive was that it was based upon approximately four and half million readings of the air every year. I subsequently discovered that this plethora of atmospheric measurements was the product of thousands of sampling devices and stations that have been established throughout Britain since the early decades of the twentieth century. This phenomenal level of air surveillance appeared to me to mirror an interesting expression of what Michel Foucault has described as analytical responsibility. The untiring work that fed the archive seemed to reflect an analytical responsibility towards atmospheric affairs on the part of the British State. I was left wondering where this level of analytical responsibility had come from, and why it was seen as a duty of the State. Third, and finally, my discovery of this atmospheric archive left me wondering what the implications of such an activity could be for my own and others’ atmospheric conduct. Until this point I had remained blissfully ignorant of such an extensive record of air pollution, but now I found my transcendental indifference towards daily fluctuations in air pollution levels shattered. I had the power to know the quality of the air I would be breathing in different locations, and the precise composition of the chemical cocktails that it contained. I felt compelled to consider how my own actions were contributing to the mesmerising complexity of air pollution in Britain.

Soon after my discovery of this digital record of the air I began the slow, but always fascinating, study of this governmental archive. I soon realised that the tale behind this archive was a long one, stretching back over 150 years. I also discovered that this was a story that involved the mixing of science and government throughout a variety of geographical locations in Britain. The research required to develop this story has taken me to the municipal records of large urban corporations such as London, Birmingham and Glasgow; the archives of a range of national government departments including the Meteorological Office, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; the Department of the Environment; and the records of various scientific laboratories. This research project also involved studying the personal records of coal officers, nuisance inspectors, inventors, medical officers, doctors, police officers and smoke abatement societies, who had all assiduously contributed to the formation of a record of British air pollution.

Three intellectual traditions have consistently helped me to interpret the varied and voluminous nature of available archival material on the relationship between science, government and air pollution in Britain. First, the writings of Michel Foucault on the history of government, and the relationships between government and personal forms of conduct, have provided a rich methodological and theoretical terrain for my work. Second, the collective writings of scholars analysing different aspects of the sociology of scientific knowledge (including Vladimir Jankovic, Bruno Latour and Steven Shapin) have enabled me to understand better the connections between the State and science. Third, and finally, I have been strongly influenced by the work of contemporary geographers (including Stuart Elden, Matthew Hannah and Simon Naylor) who have exposed the critical role of space, as well as history, in shaping the construction of various forms of socio-environmental knowledge. Collectively these interconnected intellectual traditions have enabled me to understand how and why the production of atmospheric knowledge occurs at the creative intersection between government, science and space.

The story that follows will, I think, be of interest to scholars working in geography, the history of science, science and technology studies, the political sciences, and Foucault studies. I also hope that this book will have relevance for all those concerned with the political and scientific processes that shape what we know about the changing contents of the atmosphere and structure our varied relationships with the air.

Acknowledgements

During the completion of this research I have become indebted to the help of various individuals and institutions. I would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of Geography at University College London, and in particular Richard Munton, who kindly provided office space and valuable advice during the completion of early archival research. I would also like to thank the University of Wales, Aberystwyth Research Fund, which provided financial support for my research activities. I am also indebted to staff at the Statistical Division of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Carbon Trust, who gave up their time to speak with me about atmospheric government. I would also like to thank Richard and Stephanie Rugg and Tim and Carol Cresswell for providing me with regular overnight accommodation and wonderful hospitality during my numerous trips to London. Thanks also go to Mark Goodwin and Ann Barlow for the use of their spare room on my trips to the Meteorological Office Archives in Exeter, and Jon Oldfield for facilitating a very useful research trip to Glasgow. Finally, I would like to thank the tireless efforts of staff working at Birmingham City Archives, the British Library (London), London Metropolitan Archives (Farringdon), the Meteorological Office Archives (Exeter), the Mitchell Library (Glasgow), the National Archives (Kew), the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth), and the Royal Society Library (London), in supporting my efforts to track down the material upon which this volume is based.

Beyond the research that has supported this project, I have also been very fortunate to receive a wide range of help in the writing of this volume. I am indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant number AH/F003056/1) for funding the period of research leave during which large portions of this book have been written. Sections of this volume were written in a wide range of different locations. I would thus like to acknowledge the supportive and creative environments for writing provided by the Centre for Alternative Technology (Gwynedd), The City Institute (York University, Toronto), Mary Immaculate College (Limerick), the Combined Universities of Cornwall (Penryn) and the National Library of Wales. The majority of this volume has, however, been written in two locations: in my home village of Cnwch Coch, overlooking the hills of the Magwr Valley; and in my office in the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences (IGES, Aberystwyth University). To this end I would like to thank, respectively, my wife Sarah, and colleagues in IGES for making both locations such happy places to think and work. This book has also benefited from enormous levels of intellectual support, advice and guidance. I would like to particularly thank Simon Naylor for his consistent interest in my atmospheric work and for our late night discussions of all things geographical. My appreciation also goes out to Rhys Jones for our daily discussions on state theory and writing inter alia; Gareth Hoskins for his advice on museum studies and the political nature of exhibition space; Peter Merriman for his valuable guidance on archival research; and Matthew Hannah for some wonderful insights into the work of Michel Foucault. The comments offered by seminar audiences at the Geography Division of the Open University; Department of Geography at the University of Exeter; and the University of Exeter in Cornwall have also been enormously helpful in the completion of this book. I am especially indebted to contributors to the special conference sessions ‘Spatial Technologies/Technological Spaces’ and ‘Atmospheric Geographies’ convened at the Annual International Conferences of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in 2005 and 2007, respectively. The following people have also provided valuable insights and advice: Anna Bullen; Luke Desforges; Deborah Dixon; Kate Edwards; Ian Gulley; Roger Keil; Vladimir Jankovic; Martin Jones; Kelvin Mason; Robert Mayhew; Richard Noakes; Carol Richards; James Ryan; Heidi Scott; Ruth Stevenson; Marc Welsh; Mike Woods; and Sophie Wynne-Jones. Finally I would like to acknowledge members of the Editorial Board of the RGS-IBG Book Series and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on the manuscript; Kevin Ward for his great enthusiasm and support for this project; and Jacqueline Scott for her valued advice during the final production stages of this manuscript.

Abbreviations

ACAP Advisory Committee on Atmospheric Pollution [Meteorological Office] ADMN Acid Deposition Monitoring Network AURN Automated Urban and Rural Network AUN Automated Urban Network B.Cit.Arch Birmingham City Archives CEH Centre for Ecology and Hydrology CIAP Committee for the Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution CUEP Central Unit on Environmental Pollution Defra Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs DoE Department of the Environment DSIR Department of Scientific and Industrial Research ECDIN European Chemical Data Information Network ECEP European Community Environment Programme EMPACT Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking (EPA, USA) G.Cit.Arch Glasgow City Archives HC.PP House of Commons Parliamentary Papers ICAPR Interdepartmental Committee on Air Pollution Research IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IRPTC International Register of Potentially Toxic Chemicals L.Met.Arch London Metropolitan Archives LRTAP Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (Europe) M.Off.Arch Meteorological Office Archives NAEI National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory NAPS National Air Pollution Survey NEGTP National Expert Group on Transboundary Pollution NERC Natural Environment Research Council NETCEN National Environmental Technology Centre N-MVOC Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds OUP Ozone Umbrella Programme OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development RCEP Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution RGAR Review Group on Acid Rain SCCB Standing Conference of Cooperating Bodies SDMN Sulphur Dioxide Monitoring Network SSK Sociology of Scientific Knowledge TNA The National Archives (Kew, London) UKNFC UK National Focal Centre for Critical Loads Modelling and Mapping UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe UNEP United Nations Environment Programme VOC Volatile Organic Compounds WSL Warren Spring Laboratory

Chapter One

Introduction: Space, History and the Governing of Air Pollution

On 700 Years of Air Government

It is the year 1307 in medieval London. Rumours are abound that one denizen of the fledgling metropolis has been subjected to a gruesome penalty for perpetrating the most novel of crimes. This unnamed individual, it was claimed, had broken the recent Royal Proclamation banning the burning of sea-coal in the city. The punishment meted out to this early atmospheric felon, or so the tale goes, was torture, hanging and ultimate decapitation!1 While it seems unlikely that such a punishment was ever actually carried out,2 it was perhaps the nature of the crime, as much as the extreme form of the purported penalty, which would have concerned the fourteenth-century urban dweller. Before the Royal Proclamation of 1306 the idea that polluting the air could be deemed a criminal offence was simply inconceivable. The age of British atmospheric government had begun.

It is the year 2007 in post-industrial Britain. According to latest government figures, over four million readings have been made of the British atmosphere this year from a network of over 1500 government-sponsored air pollution monitoring stations.3 This never-ending process of 24-hour air surveillance has recorded the varying concentrations of a heady chemical concoction of pollutants including ammonia, sulphur dioxide, trace metals, oxides of nitrogen, organic micro pollutants, particulate matter and various hydrocarbons inter alia. Only a small fraction of the incomprehensible volume of atmospheric knowledge produced by the British government in 2007 will be used to support the prosecution of air polluters. None has been utilised as a basis for summary execution!