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Politics at the Airport
Politics at the Airport <> Paperback <> MarkB.Salter <> UniversityofMinnesotaPress
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 17, 2022
It’s a positive sign that more and more social science scholarship is branching out into places where one would never expect to find rigorous intellectual analysis.
However, maybe an airport shouldn’t be all that abnormal a setting for critical endeavors. For all the academic buzz of globalization, there is relatively little discussion on the institutions that enable people to travel the globe. Airports are as important for globalization as the internet, the shipping container, and ISO. While parading themselves as elegant nodes (particularly with non-US airports) in an ever-expanding transportation network, airports are really complex assemblages actualizing the post-WWII developments in political-economy, technology, ideology, and culture. Though as some of the authors of this reader are eager to point out: the parading itself is significant in that airport power brokers have lofty agendas they can only carry out if they maintain a certain public veneer, so in this respect, even the simple is complex.
As for the reader itself, I find it to be a great stepping stone towards achieving a deeper understanding of the “airport assemblage”, though I do have a few issues with this book assemblage. The most glaring issue is that the first half of the book is saturated with 9/11-era political breakdowns of the security aspects of airports. While understanding the 2001 shift in airport security measures is undoubtably an important component of unpacking the assemblage, the authors failed to convince me that it was an aspect deserving of half the book. Don’t get me wrong, the scholars know their stuff and have a cargoplane-load of sources that details security measures, but I found the scholarly analysis in these sections to be one-note, particularly compared with the latter chapters. Many of these chapters present the same conclusions about the dilemma of security vs personal liberty (to shop). I found Adey’s “Modulations” chapter to have the most interesting analysis on security, and that wasn’t even the purpose of the chapter.
Additionally, for a book where multiple authors stress the need to not view airports as a given, there is 0 scholarly attention here devoted to how airports are located where they are and the initial embedding in local/regional political structures/geographies. While for most airports this would involve some historical work, it is not like societies have stopped constructing/expanding them. This external aspect of the airport is just as political and important as the internal capitalist cacophany. These points are especially enticing because airports have so much variation in terms of their regional situatedness. Additionally, the prose can suffer a bit from being monotonous and overemphasizing the primary sources of 9/11 era govt agencies.
These gripes aside though, I do not regret this read. The authors engage with a subject few scholars examine, and they do so in a way that inspired the reader to not just reflect on the identified aspects of the assemblage, but ponder what else these strange places are hiding in plain sight. For those who wonder why airports are a pain (but also kind of a vibe), this is worth the read.
However, maybe an airport shouldn’t be all that abnormal a setting for critical endeavors. For all the academic buzz of globalization, there is relatively little discussion on the institutions that enable people to travel the globe. Airports are as important for globalization as the internet, the shipping container, and ISO. While parading themselves as elegant nodes (particularly with non-US airports) in an ever-expanding transportation network, airports are really complex assemblages actualizing the post-WWII developments in political-economy, technology, ideology, and culture. Though as some of the authors of this reader are eager to point out: the parading itself is significant in that airport power brokers have lofty agendas they can only carry out if they maintain a certain public veneer, so in this respect, even the simple is complex.
As for the reader itself, I find it to be a great stepping stone towards achieving a deeper understanding of the “airport assemblage”, though I do have a few issues with this book assemblage. The most glaring issue is that the first half of the book is saturated with 9/11-era political breakdowns of the security aspects of airports. While understanding the 2001 shift in airport security measures is undoubtably an important component of unpacking the assemblage, the authors failed to convince me that it was an aspect deserving of half the book. Don’t get me wrong, the scholars know their stuff and have a cargoplane-load of sources that details security measures, but I found the scholarly analysis in these sections to be one-note, particularly compared with the latter chapters. Many of these chapters present the same conclusions about the dilemma of security vs personal liberty (to shop). I found Adey’s “Modulations” chapter to have the most interesting analysis on security, and that wasn’t even the purpose of the chapter.
Additionally, for a book where multiple authors stress the need to not view airports as a given, there is 0 scholarly attention here devoted to how airports are located where they are and the initial embedding in local/regional political structures/geographies. While for most airports this would involve some historical work, it is not like societies have stopped constructing/expanding them. This external aspect of the airport is just as political and important as the internal capitalist cacophany. These points are especially enticing because airports have so much variation in terms of their regional situatedness. Additionally, the prose can suffer a bit from being monotonous and overemphasizing the primary sources of 9/11 era govt agencies.
These gripes aside though, I do not regret this read. The authors engage with a subject few scholars examine, and they do so in a way that inspired the reader to not just reflect on the identified aspects of the assemblage, but ponder what else these strange places are hiding in plain sight. For those who wonder why airports are a pain (but also kind of a vibe), this is worth the read.
November 8, 2017
A bit dated now, but still one of the go-to texts on reading the politics of airports in technical, data-based, policy-driven, and architectural ways.
May 25, 2020
Loved the book! It is well written and carefully researched. I just wish I had read it when it first came out .
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews