Abstract
This book explores the historical relationship between ‘technonatures’ and urban
transformations in the Global North. In recent years, various interdisciplinary
movements such as Urban Political Ecology, STS and New Materialism have
affected urban history and generated new scholarly insights into the formation of
cities and urban life based on notions of hybridity, entanglement and metabolism.
While scholars have increasingly attempted to grasp the socio-natural and
technical complexity of cities, studies dealing with urban transformation within
urban history have, however, mostly concentrated on political actors or broader
social and economic changes. Seeking to introduce the concept of technonatures
to the field of urban environmental history, this book instead takes its empirical
and analytical starting point in the technonatural fabric of cities. Focusing on
urban rivers, dumps, railways, flood walls and housing, the chapters of the book
thus examines how different entanglements of environment, technology and
agency have shaped cities and processes of urbanization in the Global North
from the seventeenth century onwards. By foregrounding the transformative role
of urban natures, materialities and technologies in shaping the politics of urban
life and cities more broadly, the book aspires to probe the potentiality of
technonatures as a conceptual and analytical strategy for urban environmental
historians.
transformations in the Global North. In recent years, various interdisciplinary
movements such as Urban Political Ecology, STS and New Materialism have
affected urban history and generated new scholarly insights into the formation of
cities and urban life based on notions of hybridity, entanglement and metabolism.
While scholars have increasingly attempted to grasp the socio-natural and
technical complexity of cities, studies dealing with urban transformation within
urban history have, however, mostly concentrated on political actors or broader
social and economic changes. Seeking to introduce the concept of technonatures
to the field of urban environmental history, this book instead takes its empirical
and analytical starting point in the technonatural fabric of cities. Focusing on
urban rivers, dumps, railways, flood walls and housing, the chapters of the book
thus examines how different entanglements of environment, technology and
agency have shaped cities and processes of urbanization in the Global North
from the seventeenth century onwards. By foregrounding the transformative role
of urban natures, materialities and technologies in shaping the politics of urban
life and cities more broadly, the book aspires to probe the potentiality of
technonatures as a conceptual and analytical strategy for urban environmental
historians.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|
| Forlag | Palgrave Macmillan |
|---|---|
| Status | Accepteret/In press - 2023 |