Policing the Skies: Environmental Governmentality, State Science and the British Atmosphere.

In the context of contemporary concern over climate change, the destruction of the Ozone Layer and the various health problems associated with air pollution there has never been a more important time to know what is going on in the atmosphere. But how do we know about the chemical balances and imbalances of the atmosphere? This project is based upon the belief that in order to understand the types of atmospheric knowledge, which are available today we need to take an historical look at the sciences and political regimes which have shaped the form and nature and atmospheric monitoring procedures. Focusing specifically on the UK, this project charts the emergence of atmospheric pollution monitoring and the scientific breakthroughs and political initiatives, which have made increasingly national patterns of monitoring possible.

The projects objectives are:

- To reveal the technological and political processes which have historically enabled the production of knowledge of atmospheric pollution.

- To examine the political and geographical resistances which have emerged to national air monitoring processes.

- To reveal the variety of alternative, local ways which have emerged to knowing and monitoring air pollution events in Britain.

This project is primarily interested in the links between human society and the atmosphere. The atmosphere embodies an important meeting point of various social, economic and ecological systems, but its study has historically been the preserve of the physical scientist. Increasingly scholars working within the Arts and Humanities have started to uncover the socio-economic processes through which the atmosphere is transformed, and how knowledge of the atmosphere is connected to a whole range of cultural traditions and political procedures. Analysis is also concerned with the historical evolution of scientific practice and how scientific development is shaped by both political requirements and technological breakthroughs. In the context of the British atmosphere this project charts how since the 1891 Public Health Act there has been an ongoing struggle to forge a science of air pollution monitoring. By revisiting the accounts of early meteorologists and smoke officers who were given responsibility for pollution observation this project reveals the practical barriers, which existed to the development of a science of atmospheric observation. This research project also considers the role of state authorities and governmental departments in forging a national science of atmospheric monitoring in the UK. Through the study of the records of different government departments, analysis shows how a new regime of increasingly broad spatial monitoring started to emerge in the UK form the 1920s onwards. Analysis culminates with a consideration of the operation of the Britain's first National Air Pollution Survey (1961-1971), and reveals that far from representing a triumph of central state planning, that national registers of air pollution in the UK are in part a product of the local scientific initiatives and institutional developments which were achieved at local monitoring sites and stations.

By charting the rise of a state science of atmospheric monitoring in the UK this project reveals how contemporary registers of atmospheric knowledge are, in part, the legacies of the goals and rationalities of erstwhile political authorities. In this way analysis exposes how rather than reflecting the needs of scientific research or social communities, available knowledge of the atmosphere is structured and constrained by the monitoring desires of governmental authorities. The value of this exercise derives from the ways in which it suggests the need for a broader range of ways of monitoring and knowing the atmosphere, which can serve a much broader range of social needs in diverse geographical locations. \