ABSTRACT
Thinking through the etymological roots of technology and ecology, a curious tension arises. ‘Tech’ connotes making or fabrication, and thus resonates with the essential features of textuality. ‘Eco’ connotes home, property and dwelling, which necessarily entails connections, distribution, partition, as well as the demarcation of an inside from an outside. Technoecologies are thus simultaneously writing and limiting, opening up and closing. The focus of this article is on Chinese social media discussions about the ways in which Air Quality Index (AQI) scores are measured and felt bodily. It interrogates the ‘how’ of the relationality between AQI and bodily practices of measurement. The aim of the article is twofold. First, it rethinks air quality measurement in corporeal terms, and asks about the nature of corporeality and its relation with the environment. Second, in suggesting AQI as technoecologies as bodies that number, it asks for a reconsideration of the political of environmental politics.
