Description: NOMINATED AND SHORT LISTED FOR THE SURVEILLANCE STUDIES BOOK PRIZE 2011!
This theoretically informed research explores what the development and transformation of air travel has meant for societies and individuals.
- Brings together a number of interdisciplinary approaches towards the aeroplane and its relation to society
- Presents an original theory that our societies are aerial societies, or 'aerealities', and shows how we are both enabled and threatened by aerial mobility
- Features a series of detailed international case studies which map the history of aviation over the past century - from the promises of early flight, to World War II bombing campaigns, and to the rise of international terrorism today
- Demonstrates the transformational capacity of air transport to shape societies, bodies and individual identities
- Offers startling historical evidence and bold new ideas about how the social and material spaces of the aeroplane are considered in the modern era
Review Quotes: ''Peter Adey is a clear, strong, inventive, unique voice in human geography. In Aerial Life, he brings together a fascinating set of theoretical concerns and empirical cases in his inimitable style, with a gravity of purpose and a lightness of touch that makes for an incredibly rich book.'
--Mark B. Salter, University of Ottawa
'By extending critical human geography to the complex verticalities of airspace, Peter Adey offers a vitally important riposte to the long neglect of aerial cultural politics in the social sciences. Aerial Life is a brilliant tour de force. Incisive, comprehensive, fresh and, above all, topical - this is the book which can guide us as we address the geographies of the aerial.'
--Stephen Graham, Newcastle University