CfP: HSS 2024_Panel on "History of environmental monitorin and remote sensing practices"
Gemma Cirac
Monitoring and remote sensing have emerged in the 20th century as key practices in the field of environmental sciences. Based on satellites, ships, aircrafts or on-the-ground installations, including embodied sensing activities, systems of monitoring provide with vast flows of data aimed at the production of knowledge, and the governance of the planet and local environments. Their creation, maintenance and use open important questions, such as the dual use of these technologies, the agendas to commercialize the collected data, the emergence of new elites connected to data management and ownership, the politics of scale, the emergence of data-based sciences as epistemologically privileged approach in contemporary science, the legitimation of citizen sensing, and the uneven power relations embedded in all these questions.
The aim of the session is to bring together case studies on the history of monitoring and remote sensing in the late 20th century. Themes of interest for the session include, but are not limited to:
• The history of specific remote sensing technologies
• Uses of remote sensing in specific sciences
• Data management, including data standardization, access, storage and trade
• Datacenters as sites of knowledge making
• Citizen monitoring practices
• Forms of resistance to hegemonic monitoring and remote sensing practices
• Commercialisation of monitoring and remote sensing
• Monitoring and remote sensing as spaces for scientific diplomacy and currency for environmental expertise
Due date for paper proposals: Thursday 11 April 2024
Please contact Gemma Cirac-Claveras (Institut d’Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) at gemma...@uab.cat & Nestor Herran (OSU Ecce Terra, Sorbonne Université) at nestor...@sorbone-universite.fr. Please include your proposed paper’s title and a 200-word abstract.
Best regards,