ABSTRACT
Within the growing, if scattered, body of research on the impacts of artifi cial light at night, this book focuses fi rmly on societal, rather than technical or ecological, aspects. It presents one of the fi rst state-of-the-art overviews of current debates on lighting among the humanities and social sciences, covering the fi elds of history, literature, economics, law, political science, geography and planning studies. The contributions reveal a plurality of perspectives and approaches on lighting, but also evidence of cross-disciplinary learning and research between these fi elds of scholarly endeavour. The differentiated picture they draw, individually and collectively, has important implications for policy on light pollution. These can be broadly categorised with respect to the production of lighting, the “consumption” of lighting and the regulation of lighting, as follows.
