Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chinese Weather System

by Jerry C. Zee

Overview

In China, the weather has changed. Decades of reform have been shadowed by a changing meteorological normal: seasonal dust storms and spectacular episodes of air pollution have reworked physical and political relations between land and air in China and downwind. Continent in Dust offers an anthropology of strange weather, focusing on intersections among statecraft, landscape, atmosphere, and society. Traveling from state engineering programs that attempt to choreograph the movement of mobile dunes in the interior, to newly reconfigured bodies and airspaces in Beijing, and beyond, this book explores contemporary China as a weather system in the making: what would it mean to understand “the rise of China” literally, as the country itself rises into the air?

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520384101
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/11/2022
Series:	Critical Environments: Nature, Science, and Politics , #10
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jerry C. Zee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Contents

        List of Illustrations
        Acknowledgments

        Apparatus A. Nightwind
        Introduction: Earthly Interphases
    
Part I  Wind-Sand
         Apparatus B. The Wind Tunnel
     1. Machine Sky
         Apparatus C. A Sheet of Loose Sand
     2. Groundwork
         Apparatus D. Five Thousand Years
     3. Holding Patterns
     
Part II  Fine Particulate Matter
     4. Particulate Exposures
         Apparatus E. Wildfires
     5. City of Chambers

Part III Continent in Dust
         Apparatus F. A Sinocene
     6.  Downwinds 
         Apparatus G. Monsters
         
         Notes
         References
         Index

Editorial Reviews

"The book reframes how we think and write about practical action and responses in the face of climate emergency."

Publics Books

"Continent in Dust is an ambitious and intriguing book. A delightful read which should be widely utilized in teaching and discussions on contemporary China and planetary health and change."

The China Quarterly

"Continent in Dust is a literary adventure."

Anthropology and Humanism

"More than anything, Continent in Dust is an essential intervention into recent writings about the arts of living amid planetary uncertainty, precarity and ruin. Reading this book is like seeing the blue sky emerge from a dust storm’s haze. Jerry Zee shows us how to reorient our senses and conceptual toolkits to see onto other possible worlds."

Inner Asia

"A groundbreaking book on the management of dust storm and air quality in China. . . . Zee’s book is an enduring meditation on the consequences of China’s modernisation."

China Perspectives

"Continent in Dust is a timely and critical intervention in the roles and relationships of China and Asia in weather-world-systems. . . . It is a welcome contribution to a growing conversation about how material, ecological and meteorological phenomena are mutually implicated with practices, knowledges and experiences of sovereignty, ethics, and sociality."
 

International Journal of Asian Studies

"A groundbreaking book on the management of dust storm and air quality in China. . . . Zee's book is an enduring meditation on the consequences of China's modernisation."-- "China Perspectives"

"The book reframes how we think and write about practical action and responses in the face of climate emergency."-- "Publics Books"

"More than anything, Continent in Dust is an essential intervention into recent writings about the arts of living amid planetary uncertainty, precarity and ruin. Reading this book is like seeing the blue sky emerge from a dust storm's haze. Jerry Zee shows us how to reorient our senses and conceptual toolkits to see onto other possible worlds."-- "Inner Asia"

"Continent in Dust is an ambitious and intriguing book. A delightful read which should be widely utilized in teaching and discussions on contemporary China and planetary health and change."-- "The China Quarterly"

"Continent in Dust is a literary adventure."-- "Anthropology and Humanism"

"Continent in Dust is a timely and critical intervention in the roles and relationships of China and Asia in weather-world-systems. . . . It is a welcome contribution to a growing conversation about how material, ecological and meteorological phenomena are mutually implicated with practices, knowledges and experiences of sovereignty, ethics, and sociality."
-- "International Journal of Asian Studies"

From the Publisher