UC Irvine

This dissertation approaches the current crisis of anthropogenic climate change from the perspective of place making practices. Through several years of ethnographic research focused in New York City, I explore a variety of communities that are each concerned with producing technosocial or phenomenological interfaces between the city and the planetary climate system. Through work done with a community of bioartists, the city’s Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics and the GeoNYC mapping meetup, I explore particular instances where individual experience of the city is given structure and shape. I then contextualize the work done at the level of the city with the ways in which the planet itself becomes available as an object of knowledge and as an experienced thing. By considering work done at the level of international policy, the history of science and the lived experience of climatologists I explore a complex set of practices that contribute to an understanding of the contemporary planet. Finally, I argue that in devising a response to climate change, attention must be paid to the relationships between a subjective experience of place and the broader planetary ontologies that we produce.