TY - JOUR
T1 - Data Witnessing: Making Sense of Urban Air in Copenhagen, Denmark
AU - Dalsgaard, Steffen
AU - Haarløv, Rasmus Tyge
AU - Bille, Mikkel
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Taking air pollution in Copenhagen as a case of environmental change, this article discusses the different ways that data are employed in processes of witnessing this change. We distinguish between three different modes of “data witnessing”—modest, imperial, and guerrilla—in order to clarify how different scientific, corporate, or civil society actors are engaged in producing and analyzing data about air pollution from different vantage points and with different interests. Their respective data work, as well as their joint participation in collaboration and confrontation over theinterpretation of data, isa crucial component inmaking sense of air pollution in Copenhagen, which is predominantly out of reach to the human senses. Witnessing air pollution in Copenhagen is made possible by critical data designs under circumstances where neither data, nor subjective witnessing, in itself is enough.
AB - Taking air pollution in Copenhagen as a case of environmental change, this article discusses the different ways that data are employed in processes of witnessing this change. We distinguish between three different modes of “data witnessing”—modest, imperial, and guerrilla—in order to clarify how different scientific, corporate, or civil society actors are engaged in producing and analyzing data about air pollution from different vantage points and with different interests. Their respective data work, as well as their joint participation in collaboration and confrontation over theinterpretation of data, isa crucial component inmaking sense of air pollution in Copenhagen, which is predominantly out of reach to the human senses. Witnessing air pollution in Copenhagen is made possible by critical data designs under circumstances where neither data, nor subjective witnessing, in itself is enough.
U2 - 10.1086/717018
DO - 10.1086/717018
M3 - Journal article
VL - 11
SP - 521
EP - 536
JO - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
JF - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
SN - 2049-1115
IS - 2
ER -