The Great Smog of China traces Chinese air pollution events dating back to more than 2, 000 years ago. Based on the authors’ fieldwork, interviews and text studies, the book offers a short and concise history of selected air pollution incidents that for varying reasons prompted different kinds of responses and forms of engagement in Chinese society. The three authors, from the disciplines of anthropology, China studies and political science, identify traceable incidents of smog and air pollution that have been communicated in different media and came to impact society in various ways. This also informs a discussion of what it takes to transform people’s experiences of health and environmentally related risks of pollution into broader forms of socio-political agency.
Om författaren
Anna Lisa Ahlers, born in 1982, leads the Lise Meitner Research Group »China in the Global System of Science« at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She was associate professor of Modern Chinese Society and Politics at the University of Oslo, Norway, from 2014-2020, and is a member of the Junge Akademie of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Leopoldina.