Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy

by Sara J. Grossman

Overview

In Immeasurable Weather Sara J. Grossman explores how environmental data collection has been central to the larger project of settler colonialism in the United States. She draws on an extensive archive of historical and meteorological data spanning two centuries to show how American scientific institutions used information about the weather to establish and reinforce the foundations of a white patriarchal settler society. Grossman outlines the relationship between climate data and state power in key moments in the history of American weather science, from the nineteenth-century public data-gathering practices of settler farmers and teachers and the automation of weather data during the Dust Bowl to the role of meteorological satellites in data science’s integration into the militarized state. Throughout, Grossman shows that weather science reproduced the natural world as something to be measured, owned, and exploited. This data gathering, she contends, gave coherence to a national weather project and to a notion of the nation itself, demonstrating that weather science’s impact cannot be reduced to a set of quantifiable phenomena.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478027034
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2023
Series:	Elements
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sara J. Grossman is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies on the Johanna Alderfer Harris and William H. Harris Professorship in Environmental Studies at Bryn Mawr College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations  ix
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction: About American Weather  1
1. Dreaming Data: Locating Early Nineteenth-Century Weather Data  25
2. Gendering Data: The Women of the Smithsonian Meteorological Project  57
3. Data in the Sky: Scientific Kites, Settler Masculinity, and Quantifying the Air  87
4. Data’s Edge: Cleaning Data and Dust Bowl Crises  111
5. Ugly Data in the Age of Satellites and Extreme Weather  137
Epilogue: Data’s Inheritance  171
Notes  179
Bibliography  209
Index  229

Editorial Reviews

"Immeasurable Weather offers timely and crucial anti-colonial and feminist perspectives amid the growing interest in the history and philosophy of the atmosphere. This work is particularly valuable for scholars in STS and environmental history. It would also be of interest to professionals in meteorology and climate science."

Science as Cutlure - Dong Xia

Building on the idea that science has long been embedded in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, this book argues that we should approach weather and all its entanglements in ways that reinforce rather than sever our connections to the more-than-human world and our relationships with each other. Ultimately, the book challenges the environmentalist fetish for data and the assumption that it mobilizes people to action. Instead, the legacy of this data fetish shows that it can just as often lead to more damage, especially to the relationships and communities on which flourishing ecosystems depend.

Sarah Jaquette Ray

"A sociocultural history of weather data, Immeasurable Weather is a feat both in substance and style. . . . Many key themes throughout Immeasurable Weather will be worthwhile to scholars interested in the critical study of data, automation, and technology. Historians of technology will find intriguing connections between the militarization of weather data and the rise of wartime computing."

Technology and Culture - Sara M. B. Simon

"Immeasurable Weather is a timely addition to the study of meteorology’s formative decades. Its introduction of settler colonialism as an analytical frame to the history of that field is both an interesting and valuable perspective. . . . [T]he book surely ought to find its way onto the shelf of anyone interested in the evolution of US meteorology, the history of settler colonialism and American nation building, or data in the history of science more generally."

Physics Today - Robert Suits

In her analysis of the relationship between weather data and human experience, Sara J. Grossman’s main point—all the data in the world won’t save us—is stupendously timely and significant. Scholars of environmental history, of environmental humanities, and of the history of science will learn a great deal from this important book.

Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit - Joyce E. Chaplin

"Building on the idea that science has long been embedded in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, this book argues that we should approach weather and all its entanglements in ways that reinforce rather than sever our connections to the more-than-human world and our relationships with each other. Ultimately, the book challenges the environmentalist fetish for data and the assumption that it mobilizes people to action. Instead, the legacy of this data fetish shows that it can just as often lead to more damage, especially to the relationships and communities on which flourishing ecosystems depend."--Sarah Jaquette Ray, Professor, Cal Poly Humboldt

"In her analysis of the relationship between weather data and human experience, Sara J. Grossman's main point--all the data in the world won't save us--is stupendously timely and significant. Scholars of environmental history, of environmental humanities, and of the history of science will learn a great deal from this important book."--Joyce E. Chaplin, author of "Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit"

From the Publisher

Building on the idea that science has long been embedded in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, this book argues that we should approach weather and all its entanglements in ways that reinforce rather than sever our connections to the more-than-human world and our relationships with each other. Ultimately, the book challenges the environmentalist fetish for data and the assumption that it mobilizes people to action. Instead, the legacy of this data fetish shows that it can just as often lead to more damage, especially to the relationships and communities on which flourishing ecosystems depend.

Sarah Ray