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Social Science Human Geography

Sensing Changes

Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953-2003

by (author) Joy Parr

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jul 2010
Category
Human Geography, Ecology, Social History, Post-Confederation (1867-)
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774817240
    Publish Date
    Jul 2010
    List Price
    $32.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774817233
    Publish Date
    Dec 2009
    List Price
    $95.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774817257
    Publish Date
    Jul 2010
    List Price
    $125.00

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Description

Our bodies are archives of sensory knowledge that shape how we understand the world. But if global environmental changes continue at their present unsettling pace, how will we make sense of time and place when the air, land, and water around us are no longer familiar?

 

Joy Parr, one of Canada’s premier historians, tackles this question by exploring situations in the recent past when state-driven megaprojects such as chemical plants, dams, nuclear reactors, transportation corridors, and new regulatory regimes forced people to cope with radical transformations in their work and home environments. In each case, the familiar was transformed so thoroughly that residents no longer recognized where they lived or, by implication, who they were.

 

Sensing Changes and its associated website, http://megaprojects.uwo.ca, make a key contribution to environmental history and the emerging field of sensory history. This study offers a timely, prescient perspective on how humans make sense of the world in the face of rapid environmental change.

About the author

Joy Parr is a Farley Endowed Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of The Gender of Breadwinners, winner of the 1990 Macdonald Prize for the best work in Canadian history.

Joy Parr's profile page

Awards

  • Short-listed, The François-Xavier Garneau Medal, Canadian Historical Association
  • Short-listed, Sir John A. Macdonald Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association
  • Winner, Sidney Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology
  • Winner, Canada Prize in the Social Sciences, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Editorial Reviews

Historian and geographer Joy Parr has written an extraordinary book…Sensing Changes will make important contributions to the field of sensory studies and that other readers, approaching their own topics in diverse locations and from various disciplinary backgrounds, will, like this reviewer, find edification and inspiration in the pages of this remarkable book.

Senses and Society, Vol 6, Issue 2

The New Media component of Sensing Changes is a wonderful illustration of how we can and should engage our students in multi-sensory ways and how we, as historians, must move beyond privileging the written word.

Left History, 15.1

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