Search

Governments use metrics made possible by new data technologies to allocate budgets, manage pandemics, valorize ecosystems, and demonstrate how these actions are legitimate. Big data is pointed to as providing objective answers that emerge untampered from observations of the world as it is – a view from nowhere. While data is more valued than ever in environmental governance, so too are arrangements that seek stakeholders' input and otherwise address their subjective interests – a view from everywhere. Different kinds of metrics perform state actors as accountable in both registers: metrics that are responsive to dynamic conditions; that account for specific stakeholders; that can be prioritized against one another in interactive data visualization tools. Louisiana, USA's Coastal Master Plan is an attempt to stem wetlands loss through fine-scale modeling of large volumes of data and calculation of these kinds of social and environmental metrics. State actors there make accountability claims that appear contradictory: their decisions are legitimate because they are driven by the best available coastal science and technology, while their data tools 'didn't make decisions for us.' As state actors deploy environmental big data and metrics to make sense of it, we should be able to explain these apparently contradictory stances and the controversies that result. STS theory on metrics in environmental governance benefits from characterizing how 'modes of authorized seeing' are given expression by different metrical forms and what brings modes into contact and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Geographies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This illustrated essay attempts to respond to the slow violence of the hazardous waste trade. We introduce and analyze common representational styles of hazardous waste: greenwashing, ruin porn, environmental justice toxic tours, and Ngai’s concept of the merely interesting. We argue that the first two styles tend to reproduce the status quo, but that the latter two are potentially more disruptive. We then turn to a data set about the transnational hazardous waste trade in North America to argue for and produce alternative representations of this waste, literally drawing from the data and figuratively drawing inspiration from toxic tours and the merely interesting. Our intervention is thus visual as well as conceptual: We argue against status quo representations of hazardous waste and then discuss and produce alternatives based on a novel data set we created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HazMatMapper is an online and interactive geographic visualization tool designed to facilitate exploration of transnational flows of hazardous waste in North America (http://geography.wisc.edu/hazardouswaste/map/). While conventional narratives suggest that wealthier countries such as Canada and the United States (US) export waste to poorer countries like Mexico, little is known about how waste trading may affect specific sites within any of the three countries. To move beyond anecdotal discussions and national aggregates, we assembled a novel geographic dataset describing transnational hazardous waste shipments from 2007 to 2012 through two Freedom of Information Act requests for documents held by the US Environmental Protection Agency. While not yet detailing all of the transnational hazardous waste trade in North America, HazMatMapper supports multiscale and site-specific visual exploration of US imports of hazardous waste from Canada and Mexico. It thus enables academic researchers, waste regulators, and the general public to generate hypotheses on regional clustering, transnational corporate structuring, and environmental justice concerns, as well as to understand the limitations of existing regulatory data collection itself. Here, we discuss the dataset and design process behind HazMatMapper and demonstrate its utility for understanding the transnational hazardous waste trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I question how representations of tourist destinations color and are colored by development. Presenting the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, I find that the authenticity of portrayals of place is important not for its veracity, but for the social work it performs. Authenticity is not merely socially constructed but expressive of social relations which value people and places. Tourist perceptions of thecaribe suras genuinely underdeveloped—gauged by an analysis of photos and guidebooks as well as surveys—produce an approach to resource use within the community that is limiting. Because the value of the place is its underdevelopment, development itself constrains the possibility of sustaining further growth. Ultimately, reading development via place can be a guide for critically appreciating contemporary patterns of tourism and sustainable development in thecaribe surand elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]