Innovating Air Pollution Governance: Collaborations, Interruptions, and Regenerations

Abstract

This panel brings together scholars studying and participating in innovative forms of air pollution governance. It seeks to map the ways in which we can think of these interventions as interrupting or regenerating spaces, practices, and futures in relation to air pollution governance. Presentations address many modes, stages and styles of air pollution governance, which we understand to include state and non-state actors, complex knowledge politics, and intricate translational challenges. We are interested in ways science has been produced and used in governance, air pollution monitoring design and mitigation programs, and in the collaborations that produce and sustain these. We are also interested in the work of environmental activists and journalists, in innovations within city governments, and in legal strategies to address air pollution. Presentations focus on technological innovations (artifacts, industries, or spaces of air pollution generation or clean up initiatives); multiscalar approaches to governance (from large “greening” projects to small scale, bottom-up approaches); or negotiations between scientific knowledges and other forms of knowledge and practice in people’s daily lives. Other topics of interest include science-to-policy pathways, new data collection and visualization practices, air pollution education, and environmental (in)justice. The panel brings together scholars from different regions, showcasing globally-situated, imaginative ways of engaging with air pollution that pay attention to historical and cultural settings in a world undergoing rapid change. The panel invites a broad range of reflections on air pollution and its interfaces with late-industrialism.

Chair

• Maka Suarez, Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography

Discussant

• Kim Fortun, University of California Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Making Sense of Data through Collaborative Measuring of Air Pollution: Community Air Monitoring Negotiations in Taiwan - Wen-Ling Tu, National Chengchi University

• Daily Practices and Experimentations. Materialistic Pragmatic Analysis for the Air Pollution of Coyhaique - Gloria Baigorrotegui, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados - Usach

• Small Sensors, Big Disruptions? Questioning Innovations in Air Pollution Monitoring - Prerna Srigyan, University of California - Irvine

• The Relative Toxicity of PM2.5 - Emma Garnett, King's College London

• Why Not “Just Get a Better Map”? The Counter-Governance of Air Pollution against Expertise - Daniel Price, University of Houston, Honors College

Session Organizers

• Maka Suarez, Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography

• Katie Cox, University of California, Irvine

• Rohit Negi, School of Global Affairs, Ambedkar University Delhi