David Demeritt

King's College London, Dept of Geography, Faculty Member

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David Demeritt is Professor of Geography at King's College London. His research and teaching connect 3 major areas of expertise:

*Environmental politics and policy, especially the construction and management of environmental risks
*Environmental history, in particular the historical construction of nature
*Science studies and social theory, especially philosophy of science and understandings of risk and science.

A unifying theme of these cross-cutting areas of nature-society expertise is the articulation of environmental knowledges, especially scientific and technical ones, with power and the policy process.

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The Construction of Global Warming and the Politics of Science

Annals of The Association of American Geographers, Jun 1, 2001

Having outlined a theory of heterogeneous social construction, this article describes the scienti... more Having outlined a theory of heterogeneous social construction, this article describes the scientific construction of climate change as a global-scale environmental problem caused by the universal physical properties of greenhouse gases. Critics have noted that this reductionist formulation serves a variety of political purposes, but instrumental and interest-based critiques of the use of scientific knowledge tend to ignore the ways in which a politics gets built into science at the upstream end. By retracing the history of climate modeling and of several scientific controversies, I unmask the tacit social and epistemic commitments implied by its specific practices. The specific scientific framing of global climate change has reinforced and been reinforced by the technocratic inclinations of global climate management. The social organization of climate change science and its articulation with the political process raise important questions about trust, uncertainty, and expertise. The article concludes with a discussion of the political brittleness of this dominant science-led and global-scale formulation of the climate change problem and the need for a more reflexive politics of climate change and of scientific knowledge based on active trust.

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The Knowledge Business: Critical Perspectives on the commodification of urban research

Collaborative Postgraduate Research in a Contract Research Culture

Blackwell Companion to Environmental Geography

Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002, 358 pages, $34.95 paperback

Journal of Historical Geography, Apr 1, 2004

Hybrid geographies, relational ontologies and situated knowledges

Sarah Whatmore has written a fascinating, if also challenging, book.Hybrid Geographies is a polyv... more Sarah Whatmore has written a fascinating, if also challenging, book.Hybrid Geographies is a polyvalent title. It simultaneously connotes anobject—or, more appropriately perhaps, a field—of inquiry, a body ofknowledge about it, and a disciplinary community committed to theirstudy. It is part of her project to blur such tidy distinctions. She seeksto recast them as the contingent outcome of networks of relationsamong the heterogeneous actors of a more than human world. Thatontological claim is far from intuitive, and I’m still struggling to graspeverything it might imply.As I understand it, though, her concern is primarily ethical-political. By remapping what counts as an autonomous subject, shechallenges long-standing humanist assumptions about who has ethicalstanding and rights. In so doing, the book works within, but alsosubstantially advances debates within, feminist and environmentalethics. Whatmore’s focus on the spatialisation of ethics bears somesimilarities, though not explicitly noticed in the book, with the work ofthe geographer David Smith (1999, 2000), who has examined thespatial metaphors of various ethical schemes. But whereas Smith isconcerned largely with anthropocentric geographies of communityand justice, Whatmore invokes an ontology of hybridity to raiseethical questions about living together with an expanded and yetalso less clear-cut sense of morally significant others. As she con-cludes, the question then becomes about ‘‘how the we of ethicalcommunities is to be renegotiated on account of its heterogeneous,intercorporal composition’’ (2002:166). Even if she does not neces-sarily provide all the answers to that question, raising the question at

Research training and the end(s) of the Ph.D

Geoforum, Nov 1, 2004

ABSTRACT

Book Review: Postmodern wetlands: culture, history, ecology

Ecumene, Apr 1, 2000

perhaps its most intransigent and complex problems. This is an important theme. However, it is eq... more perhaps its most intransigent and complex problems. This is an important theme. However, it is equally important for scholars to keep in mind that significant natural processes may dwarf human activity, and that there has to be a careful balance established in the study of the natural and human environments that leads a scholar to a wise understanding of the relative roles of natural processes and human impacts at work that shape environmental patterns and processes. This balance is even more challenging, yet essential for decisionmakers and environmental managers to comprehend as they grapple with and unravel environmental issues of the next millennium. As Sir Crispin Tickell suggests, ‘always see and deal with environmental issues together . . . isolated measures to cope with one of them can sometimes make others worse’. This reader, taken with other references, helps scholars, educators and managers to this realization.

Book Reviews : Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860. By R. H. Grove. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996. xiv + 542 pp. £14.95, paper. ISBN 0 521 56513 8

Ecumene, Oct 1, 1997

It was a pleasure to read and review this erudite and meticulously researched monograph. Sadly, t... more It was a pleasure to read and review this erudite and meticulously researched monograph. Sadly, that cannot be said for so much of the publishers’ run of the mill output, which tends to sacrifice scholarship for sales. The imperatives of the globalizing market for academic work put a higher premium on theory, which travels well and sells better, than on detailed historical analysis such as this, whose length and local specificity tends to put off the international nonspecialist audiences that increasingly dictate what gets published, even at university presses. I do not in any way mean to imply by this comment that Green imperialism. is either theoretically uninformed, turgidly written, or of narrow appeal. Far from it. In both the geographical scope of its narrative and the diversity of the dis-

Book Review: Greenspeak: a study of environmental discourse

Progress in Human Geography, Sep 1, 2000

tation, providing insights into how different groups perceived the same events and through consta... more tation, providing insights into how different groups perceived the same events and through constantly questioning the significance of events in relation to their influence on social identity. Pointing out alternative ways of being Indian besides the approach the government institutionalized, Chapter 4 provides a fascinating discussion about the Shaker movement that concludes ‘Shakers had tried, with considerable success, to retake the initiative in the process of drawing boundaries between Indian and nonIndians and defining the character of society on the Indian side of the boundary’ (p. 130). Her unconventional selection of terms is another example of critical analysis embedded within the text itself. Consciously relying upon the language of identity that developed out of early nineteenth century Puget Sound natives experiences with foreigners, Harmon uses the identity terms adopted by natives, which sort foreigners into two groups, King George men (British and their crews) and Bostons (Americans and their crews). These relationships between social interactions and the transformation of identity are of increasing interest to geographers. Some will find significance in Harmon’s insights on the strategic deployment of mobility on and off reservation and the links between mobility and identity. Some geographers will be challenged by her attempt to dispel any lingering notion ‘that change has eroded Indian identity, that Indians are not Indian unless they cling to a traditional core of aboriginal culture’ (p. 249). Others may appreciate her extensive documentation of more than a century and a half of events and interactions in western Washington. To these as well as others interested in a significant contribution to understanding what social identity is and how it has been shaped, I highly recommend this book.

Harnessing Science and Securing Societal Impacts from Publicly Funded Research: Reflections on UK Science Policy

Environment and Planning A, Mar 1, 2010

... eg Curtis 2009), often supported by leading pharmaceutical firms and their research partners ... more

Making sense of environmental geography

In Noel Castree David Demeritt Diana Liverman and Bruce Rhoads Editor a Companion to Environmental Geography 1st Ed Oxford and Malden Wiley Blackwell 2009 P 1 16, 2009

Genomic epidemiology of third-generation cephalosporin-resistantEscherichia colifrom Argentinian pig and dairy farms reveals animal-specific patterns of co-resistance and resistance mechanisms

Control measures are being introduced globally to reduce the prevalence of antibiotic resistant (... more Control measures are being introduced globally to reduce the prevalence of antibiotic resistant (ABR) bacteria on farms. However, little is known about the current prevalence and molecular ecology of ABR in key opportunistic human pathogens such asEscherichia colion South American farms. Working with 30 dairy cattle farms and 40 pig farms across two provinces in central-eastern Argentina, we report a comprehensive genomic analysis of third-generation cephalosporin resistance (3GC-R) inE. coli. 3GC-R isolates were recovered from 34.8% (cattle) and 47.8% (pigs) of samples from faecally contaminated sites. Phylogenetic analysis revealed substantial diversity suggestive of long-term horizontal transmission of 3GC-R mechanisms. Despite this, mechanisms such as CTX-M-15 and CTX-M-2 were detected more often in dairy farms, while CTX-M-8 and CMY-2, and co-carriage of amoxicillin/clavulanate resistance and florfenicol resistance were more commonly detected in pig farms. This suggests differe...

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Dictionaries, disciplines and the future of geography

Geoforum, Nov 1, 2008

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The Promises of Collaborative Research

Environment and Planning A, Dec 1, 2005

Publisher's announcement The editors and the publishers are concerned about the backlog between r... more Publisher's announcement The editors and the publishers are concerned about the backlog between receipt and publication of papers and we are taking a number of steps to overcome the problem. Over the next two years we will increase the size of Environment and Planning A by the equivalent of an extra issue. We are spreading the increase to keep the inevitable price rise to a reasonable level. We are also going to make more use of our website. Completed papers will be put on the web when they are ready, in advance of final web and paper publication, in a new``forthcoming papers'' section. Only subscribers will be able to view the full paper, but all visitors to the site will be able to read the abstract. Look out for further details over the next few months.

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Science and the Understanding of Science: A Reply to Schneider

Annals of The Association of American Geographers, Jun 1, 2001

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Introduction to the Concise Encyclopedia of Human Geography by Loretta Lees and David Demeritt

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Feb 23, 2023

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Ecology, objectivity and critique in writings on nature and human societies

Journal of Historical Geography, 1994

... and 1970s, has eroded with a renewed belief that &amp;quot;pesky &amp;#x27;biological... more ... and 1970s, has eroded with a renewed belief that &amp;quot;pesky &amp;#x27;biological details&amp;#x27; matter a lot ... therefore, Worster is also the most prominent and trenchant critic of the revisions in ecology. ... Worster complains that the new uncertainty about nature, equilibrium, and stability can &amp;quot;serve to ...

The New Social Contract for Science: Accountability, Relevance,and Value in US and UK Science and Research Policy

Antipode, Jul 1, 2000

This paper considers recent changes in US and UK science policy designed to make academic researc... more This paper considers recent changes in US and UK science policy designed to make academic research more publicly accountable and relevant. To this end, relations between public sector funding bodies academic researchers, andthe wider public are being reorganized in terms of customer‐contractor relations, though cultural and institutional differences mean these broad trends have produced different outcomes in the US and UK to which geographers will have to adapt. New forms of market based, customer accountability are restructuring the context of scientific research and reorienting long standing academic norms and values. Though these changes are designed to make academic research more responsive to the demands of various paying customers, the paper suggests the importance of reflexivity about the interests and identity involved.

Science studies, climate change and the prospects for constructivist critique

Economy and Society, Aug 1, 2006

Starting from the debates over the 'reality' of global warming and the politics of science studie... more Starting from the debates over the 'reality' of global warming and the politics of science studies, I seek to clarify what is at stake politically in constructivist understandings of science and nature. These two separate but related debates point to the centrality of modern science in political discussions of the environment and to the difficulties, simultaneously technical and political, in warranting political action in the face of inevitably partial and uncertain scientific knowledge. The case of climate change then provides an experimental test case with which to explore the various responses to these challenges offered by Ulrich Beck's reflexive modernization, the normative theory of expertise advanced by Harry Collins and Robert Evans, and Bruno Latour's utopian vision for decision-making by the 'collective' in which traditional epistemic and institutional distinctions between science and politics are entirely superseded.

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David Demeritt

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