Just over a year ago, I was invited to comment on Peter Adey’s book Aerial Life for an ‘author meets critics’ panel at the at the RGS-IBG conference. It was a real pleasure to be afforded the opportunity/excuse to read and comment on Aerial Life. The book itself is a fascinating and challenging examination of the manner in which life becomes ‘aerial’. It examines not so much what it means to be ‘in-the-air’ but the condition of being ‘air-minded’. It is less about pilots and passengers – though these make numerous appearances – than the manner in which air power ‘condition’s’ the life of those on the ground. This ‘air conditioning’ is exmplfied in excellent discussions of air power in the Gaza Strip, Malayan Insurgency and London Blitz. The concentration on the affective dimension of biopolitics is a welcome addition to the literature on the production of forms of life. My commentary, along with several others, have just been published in Political Geography. If you have an interest in vertical geographies or the biopolitics of air power I strongly recommend taking a look here.
Today sees the opening of an exhibition based on the ESRC-funded research project The urban environment: Mirror and mediator of radicalisation? The exhibition has an excellent website outlining the various strands in the research project: 