{"product_id":"happy-apocalypse-a-history-of-technological-risk-9781839765506","title":"Happy Apocalypse: A History of Technological Risk","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow risk, disasters and pollution were managed and made acceptable during the Industrial Revolution\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeing environmentally conscious is not nearly as modern as we imagine. As a mode of thinking it goes back hundreds of years. Yet we typically imagine ourselves among the first to grasp the impact humanity has on the environment. Hence there is a fashion for green confessions and \u003ci\u003emea culpas\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBut the notion of a contemporary ecological awakening leads to political impasse. It erases a long history of environmental destruction. Furthermore, by focusing on our present virtues, it overlooks the struggles from which our perspective arose. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn response, \u003ci\u003eHappy Apocalypse\u003c\/i\u003e plunges us into the heart of controversies that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries around factories, machines, vaccines and railways. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz demonstrates how risk was conceived, managed, distributed and erased to facilitate industrialization. He explores how clinical expertise around 1800 allowed vaccination to be presented as completely benign, how the polluter-pays principle emerged in the nineteenth century to legitimize the chemical industry, how safety norms were invented to secure industrial capital and how criticisms and objections were silenced or overcome to establish technological modernity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSocieties of the past did not inadvertently alter their environments on a massive scale. Nor did they disregard the consequences of their decisions. They seriously considered them, sometimes with dread. The history recounted in this book is not one of a sudden awakening but a process of modernising environmental disinhibition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Verso\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/18\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781839765506\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 272\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.81lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/22\/2024\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Jean-Baptiste Fressoz","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44145877319861,"sku":"9781839765506","price":25.46,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_e7e6de8d-625b-42f9-939a-19b55c7272af.jpg?v=1715698704","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/happy-apocalypse-a-history-of-technological-risk-9781839765506","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}