JOURNAL ARTICLE: “Politics of data legibility. A commentary on Mostafanezhad et al.'s ‘Making air pollution legible’”

Publication date: 24 April 2025

Author: Hiromi Inagaki

Publication: Further details on the article, visit the journal Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography.

Abstract: The management of complex environmental health issues is increasingly mediated through processes of datafication. While the democratization of data access has expanded through some digital applications, it has also rendered visible inconsistencies in diverse sets of data collected to decipher an environmental health phenomenon. Data concerning air pollution exemplifies this situation. This article is a commentary on Mostafanezhad et al’s (2025) article “Making air pollution legible: Environmental-health data and the naturalization of the smoky season in Northern Thailand.” The commentary addresses the politics of legibility by analysing how constituents of air pollution are distilled into data, represented, and subsequently influence its governance.

Read the full article here.

Citation: Inagaki, H. (2025), Politics of data legibility. A commentary on Mostafanezhad et al.'s ‘Making air pollution legible’. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 46: 203-205. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.70011