Temporal volumes and dimensional friction in a coral core laboratory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4355899 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cameron Allan Mckean (0000-0002-1190-6479, Anthropology, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 251-282 |
| Publication date | 2024-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Time & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0961-463X • E-ISSN: 1461-7463 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0961463x241260772 |
| OpenAlex | W4401628383 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 56 |
In the 20th century, Australia's Great Barrier Reef emerged as a political battleground when governing bodies planned to turn its coral territories into a vast mining zone. But in the 21st century, as the temporalisation of the Reef exerts increasing influence on the governance, securitisation and anticipation of planetary futures, coral time has emerged as a new site of political and imaginative conflict. Responding to this shift from territory to temporality, how can we pay closer attention to those skilfully making coral time? In this article, I introduce 'dimensional friction' as a tool for considering how the temporal structure of corals intersects with the temporal structure of global climate science in a coring laboratory. Based on my fieldwork at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, I analyse simultaneously discursive, technical, and imaginative problems that emerge when scientists transform the mineral skeletons of corals into time data. Dimensional friction appears whenever this skeletal matter is manipulated, surfacing the lab-based production of vertical time-depth but also suggesting other ways of temporalising (and corporally appropriating) coral time. Viewed in this way, coral cores might be better understood as 'temporal volumes' rather than chronostratigraphic records amenable to linear timelines and trajectories
Coral · Core (optical fiber · Optics · Physics · Cephalopods and Marine Biology · Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies · Marine animal studies overview · Geology · Oceanography
Nuclear Rites
Beamtimes and Lifetimes
Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification
We’ve never seen anything like it
Friction
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Securing the volume/volumen
Of spheres and squares
Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge
Regions, Networks and Fluids
Making climates comparable
Data, Models and Earth History in Deep Convolution
Envisioning the future by predicting the past
Bomb-Produced Radiocarbon Across the South Pacific Gyre—a New Record From American Samoa With Utility for Fisheries Science
Ice Cores as Temporal Probes
Introduction
The Anthropology of Time
Anticipation
Secure the volume
Ice Cores and the Temporalities of the Global Environment
The stratification of time
Synchronizing Earthly Timescales
After the Individual in Society
With the past under your feet
The Cultural Anthropology of Time
Time as Technique
Sensing the ice
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |