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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Sensing Changes

Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953-2003

Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Sensing Changes

Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953-2003

Our bodies are archives of sensory knowledge that shape how we understand the world. If our environment changes at an unsettling pace, how will we make sense of a world that is no longer familiar? One of Canada’s premier historians tackles this question by exploring situations in the recent past where state-driven megaprojects and regulatory and technological changes forced ordinary people to cope with transformations that were so radical that they no longer recognized their home and workplaces or, by implication, who they were. In concert with a ground-breaking, creative, and analytical website, megaprojects.uwo.ca, this timely study offers a prescient perspective on how humans make sense of a rapidly changing world.

304 pages | © 2010

Nature | History | Society


Table of Contents

Foreword: "Now I am Ready to Tell How Bodies are Changed Into Different Bodies” / Graeme Wynn

The Megaprojects New Media Series / Jon van der Veen

1 Introduction – Embodied Histories

2 Place and Citizenship – Woodlands, Meadows, and a Military Training Ground: The NATO Base at Gagetown

3 Safety and Sight – Working Knowledge of the Insensible: Radiation Protection in Nuclear Power Plants, 1962-92

4 Movement and Sound – A Walking Village Remade: Iroquois and the St. Lawrence Seaway

5 Time and Scale – A River Becomes a Reservoir: The Arrow Lakes and the Damming of the Columbia

6 Smell and Risk – Uncertainty along a Great Lakes Shoreline: Hydrogen Sulphide and the Production of Heavy Water

7 Taste and Expertise – Local Water Diversely Known: The E. coli Contamination in Walkerton 2000 and After

8 Conclusion: Historically Specific Bodies

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

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