Air Pollution in the Making

Multiplicity and Difference in Interdisciplinary Data Practices

Bibliographic Data

ID5337456
AuthorsEmma Garnett (0000-0001-9318-8548, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume42
Issue5
Pages901-924
Publication date2017-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243917699974
OpenAlexW2603463471
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited24

This article traces an emergent tension in an interdisciplinary public health project called Weather Health and Air Pollution (WHAP). The tension centered on two different kinds of data of air pollution: monitored and modeled data. Starting out with monitoring and modeling practices, the different ways in which they enacted air pollution are detailed. This multiplicity was problematic for the WHAP scientists, who were intent on working across disciplines, an initiative driven primarily by the epidemiologists who imbued the project with meaning and value as the protagonists of "health." To work collaboratively implies a stable, singular, and shared research object, however: one kind of data, one version of air pollution. In detailing two attempts by researchers to address the inadequacies of modeled and monitored data, this article explores the ways in which difference and multiplicity were negotiated and transformed. In doing so, this article suggests that it is the mobility and instability of data that are particularly fruitful for exploring the facilitation and enactment of new realities, while also making explicit the emergent problematics and partialities which inevitably result

Air pollution · Data science · Epistemology · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance

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