Publication Date:
2021-05-19
Description:
The question of how human-environment interactions help constitute society is an integral part of social scientific research. The social sci-ences and humanities have taken several “turns” to explore the role of materiality or the body and the human senses in order to understand how humans make sense of and socially construct their environment. In this rugged landscape, an emerging interdisciplinary research field is currently developing into a promising test bed for exploring the social dimension of human-environment interactions. The shared focus is on ALAN—artificial light at night. While astronomers, biologists, ecolo-gists, physicians, and psychologists explore primarily the visual and nonvisual effects of light and darkness on flora, fauna, and humans as well as ecosystems (Falchi et al. 2016; Gaston et al. 2015; Roenneberg et al. 2013),1 there is also an increasing interest in day and night rhythms, artificial lighting, dark skies, and their social and cultural implications in the social sciences, historical studies, and humanities. As outlined in the following, this research is perfectly suited to challenging the persistent dichotomous notions of nature and culture and add to a better under-standing of how our sense making relates to our senses.
Language:
English
Type:
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
