(In)temperate Zones: Daniel Drake's Medico-moral Geographies of Urban Life in the Trans-Appalachian American West

Dorn, Michaël

doi:10.1093/jhmas/55.3.256

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Meteorological knowledge, first, could solve outstanding debates about allegedly ongoing climate change and its relationship to the civilizing practices of white Europeans. Second, meteorological networks could provide the basis of a “medical geography” of western lands, which could evaluate not only the health of military posts but also the health of lands for white settlement (Cassedy 1986; Dorn 2001; Valencius 2002).…”

Section: Ordering Observations: Military Strategy and The Meteorologimentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteorological Frontiers: Climate Knowledge, the West, and US Statecraft, 1800–50

Baker¹

2018

Soc. sci. hist.

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This article advances an analytic framework for studying climate knowledge, arguing that the dynamics of how scientists construct the category of climate articulate with practices of government by a process I theorize as “meteorological government.” Using diverse primary print sources, analysis in the present article employs this theorization to reconstruct elements of US statecraft in the period from 1800 to 1850 by tracing the governmental significance of meteorological statistics, military-medical meteorology, and what I term “racial climatology.” Historical analysis shows how these components of climate knowledge were coproduced with state efforts to evaluate, calculate, and monitor (1) the military body in a context of bureaucratization of the US Army; (2) western territories in a context of territorial acquisition and providential nationalism; and (3) a stratified population “legible” by biological understandings of racial hierarchy. The analytic framework I employ draws from and informs existing literature, which challenges assumptions that the dynamics of climate knowledge can be separated from developments in social power. I conclude by discussing the implications of the analysis for how we understand science-state coproduction, both in the case of US meteorology throughout the 1800–50 period and for climate knowledge and the state in other contexts and in recent decades.

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Section: Ordering Observations: Military Strategy and The Meteorologimentioning

confidence: 99%