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Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale
Today, predicting the impact of human activities on the earth’s climate hinges on tracking interactions among phenomena of radically different dimensions, from the molecular to the planetary. Climate in Motion shows that this multiscalar, multicausal framework emerged well before computers and satellites. Extending the history of modern climate science back into the nineteenth century, Deborah R. Coen uncovers its roots in the politics of empire-building in central and eastern Europe. She argues that essential elements of the modern understanding of climate arose as a means of thinking across scales in a state—the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, a patchwork of medieval kingdoms and modern laws—where such thinking was a political imperative. Led by Julius Hann in Vienna, Habsburg scientists were the first to investigate precisely how local winds and storms might be related to the general circulation of the earth’s atmosphere as a whole. Linking Habsburg climatology to the political and artistic experiments of late imperial Austria, Coen grounds the seemingly esoteric science of the atmosphere in the everyday experiences of an earlier era of globalization. Climate in Motion presents the history of modern climate science as a history of “scaling”—that is, the embodied work of moving between different frameworks for measuring the world. In this way, it offers a critical historical perspective on the concepts of scale that structure thinking about the climate crisis today and the range of possibilities for responding to it.
439 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 19, 2018
7 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
About the author
Deborah R. Coen
6 books3 followersDeborah R. Coen is professor of history and chair of Yale University’s Program in the History of Science and Medicine. Her research focuses on the modern physical and environmental sciences and on central European intellectual and cultural history. She earned an A.B. in Physics from Harvard, an M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in History of Science from Harvard, where she was also a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows.
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June 24, 2021
This work traces the emergence of climate science in the Habsburg Empire, mainly focusing on the nineteenth century. Coen argues that at its core, Habsburg climate science was defined by questions of scaling: both in a literal sense (taking different kinds of measurements) and figurative sense (trying to conceptualise the scope of climatology). In this Coen takes inspiration from John Tresch and his “cosmograms”: "Histories of scaling must […] attend to the tools and practices of commensuration, which are not limited to measuring instruments in the traditional sense" (17). The nineteenth century in particular saw technological improvements (new kinds of microscopes, clocks, telescopes, etc) which exploded concepts of space and time, introducing new units like the tenth of a second, the electron width, the light-second, the height of the stratosphere, and so forth, which helped scientists move away from measurements on a human scale (foot, meters per second, kilogram, etc.) and towards non-human scales. This notion of scaling also neatly reflects the problem of scaling in (science) historiography, and how best to navigate micro- and macro-level analyses. Coen deals with this problem exceptionally well, constantly zooming in and out, shifting her focus to cover different aspects of Habsburg climate science. Throughout her book she constructs the ‘ideal’ type (borrowing from Max Weber) of Habsburg climate scientist (she calls this the ‘Imperial-Royal Scientist’), paying attention to his (and it is mostly his) relationship to political structures, aesthetic conventions, and local cultures. The result is a very rich and complete account of the rise of climate science in Central Europe, along with some quite obvious but still important takeaways for climate science in the twenty-first century.
Chunky Synopsis for the Fans/me when I need to refer back to this:
Chapter 1 (Collection of Nature)
Covers the iconography of the Habsburg empire, which was tightly bound with its geography and natural environment (Imperial fountain, Arcimboldo portrait of Rudolf II, Prague castle collection, etc). Cultures of collecting flourished since Renaissance (Wunderkammers, collections at Habsburg courts, etc), and some of the earliest traditions of (scientific) weather observation originate in the Habsburg Empire. Attention to the fidelity of animate and inanimate objects extended to the study of provinces of the empire, and eventually materialised into early provincial museums (the earliest being the Johanneum in Graz, (1811)). These allowed patriotic scholars to write about regional natural histories, as well as encourage new scientific work (e.g. Edward Suess, who drew from case reports of an earthquake in 1590 kept in Lower Austrian provincial archive for his contemporary work on earthquakes). Ultimately, the natural sciences and histories of the nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire grew out of a tradition of collecting nature dating back to the Renaissance.
Chapter 2 (Austrian Idea)
Covers the use of geography & ecology by scientists and patriotic writers to define and justify the Habsburg Empire. Coen starts with some political, cultural, social histories of Austro-Hungarian unity, and proposes a different way of looking at this: as well as looking directly at ideas of unity, we should also look resources people could draw from when thinking about unity (related to this metaphorical concept of scaling). The strong link between nature and society had political, social, and economic implications, and fostered the idea of diversity as a central theme.
Chapter 3 (The Imperial-Royal Scientist)
Covers the professional identity of a generation of Austro-Hungarian ‘imperial scientists’ (1840s-50s). Many of these leading climate scientists began their careers as renowned local naturalists – a very interdisciplinary concept: “this was an age when scientists were encouraged to observe and collect as widely as possible, so it was common for a researcher to harvest specimens of several disciplines at once, carrying the equipment necessary to each" (75). The famous Kronprinzenwerk (Julius Hann, 1887) was a quintessential example of such "car-window climatology", which became a veritable Habsburg genre of climate science (79). There was also an emphasis in Habsburg climatology on full-bodied and multisensory observations (what Edmund Husserl called the “prescientific experience” c.1900: modern natural science grew out of prescientific experience, which is characterised in large part by kinesthesis - the observer moves around the (observed) object in space and time and observes it thus. "According to Eduard Suess, it was a supreme virtue of geological field research that it brought the scientist into contact with new cultures as well as new landscapes. In this way, Suess argued, earth science could provide an ethical education, a prophylactic against nationalist demagoguery" (88). I find this an interesting take - especially since nowadays there is a lot of scepticism about the scientific gaze (especially in ethnography) and scientists' ability to understand local cultures. Again, we see the importance of scaling, this time imbued with a more personal, political quality.
Chapter 4 (The Dual Task):
Covers the geophysical observing network in Vienna 1840s-50s, and how it had the dual task of treating the atmosphere as a laboratory for investigating natural laws, and as a part of a global system. This period saw a flourishing of scientific academies (notably the Vienna Academy of Sciences (1847)). The Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) became described as both a public (public good) and private (private institution) institution. But the scientist himself also was imbued with three kinds of duality: 1) gaining international prestige whilst catering to local needs, 2) being both a scholar and a civil servant, 3) pursuing the universal laws of geophysics, as well as the local phenomena within the empire's borders (100).
Chapter 5 (Face of the Empire):
Covers the task of visualising ‘unity in diversity’, the "Austrian problem" of the nineteenth century. Here Coen looks at mapmaking, but also at the early-nineteenth century emergence of “Vaterlandskunde”: an umbrella discipline that was both naturalistic and humanistic. Visualising the fatherland involved emphasising vivid details (e.g. Friedrich simony adding background details to his landscape photographs), as well as developing new (i.e. post-Humboldtian) ways of representing climates. By the end of the century, maps were being made with massive scales, which allowed for more nuance and a better visualisation of weather (and by implication cultural) phenomena. Colour schemes were also important. Whereas in the German lands maps were being made with a two-tone colour scheme (green for grasslands and brow for mountains), in the Habsburg Empire, maps included more colour variations such as a pale blue for the tops of mountains that were always covered in frost (Franz van Hauslab’s system (138)).
Chapter 6 (Invention of Climatography)
Covers the development of the term "Climatography", which entered English in 1813, and was used in German by the 1830s. Julius Hann rejected (1883) the Humboldtian definition of climate in terms of human perceptions, arguing that it was too anthropocentric - climate concerned all living things (148). We may justifiably distinguish between Habsburg climatography and Humboldtian/Romantic climatography. This distinction was especially brought out in the concept of dynamism (movement in nature, multiplicity of factors, etc.), which was key in the former. Dynamism was linked to a classic Habsburg metaphor: unity as musical harmony. (166-67). Although climate “change” was not a common concept, given that climate was initially considered ahistorical, the constant question of scale, movement, and circulation meant a notion of climate change became embedded in climate science (169). This inherent meaning is still significant today. Coen uses an IPCC example from 2012, which referred to the sociological issue of modern-day climate change as not only a problem of translating the words but also a problem of communicating their meaning – if Joseph the Tanzanian boy does not conceive of climate has something that is dynamic, will he understand the climate scientist who tells him that the climate is changing (a nice example I think).
Chapter 7 (Power of Local Differences)
Covers the link between Habsburg ideology and the physics of atmospheres: dynamic climatology provided tools for individuals to make decisions about their own economic and physical wellbeing, and the metaphor of balancing out neighbouring contrasts helped to neutralize the political structure of the Empire. By the 1870s climatology had become very visible in the public sphere, and thus its concepts of dynamism adopted very public meanings as well. Local differences would cause circulation, leading to an "evening out" of oppositions – you can see how this may apply both in an atmospheric as well as a political sense.
Chapter 8 (Planetary Disturbances)
Covers the physical-mathematical description of the atmosphere (formed by figures like Hann, Morgules, Supan, etc.), which provided more scaling tools (e.g. small-scale fluid models , turbulent flow models,... ) that allowed climatologists to solve, in principle, for the "planetary-scale consequences of human-scale disturbances”. Circa 1900 is also when climatologists also started to make use of mimetic models, i.e. models that looked like what was happening in nature (see Peter Galison’s work). They were still controversial (already since the previous century), but also had an aesthetic appeal for people ordinarily occupied with number-crunching. However, these models only started to gain the attention of leading international researchers in the mid-twentieth century, when digital computers were beginning to be used, but until then they were particularly useful for people with micro-climatological concerns (e.g. farmers, fishermen).
Chapter 9 ( Forest-Climate question)
The final three chapters focus more on the social and personal dimensions of scaling processes, and draw from more intimate diary entries and correspondences. This chapter covers the Wald-Klima-Frage (W-K-F), or desiccation theory: the idea that clearing an area of vegetation led to reduced rainfall. Although the socio-politics and legal history of forests stretches back much further, it is in the latter half of the nineteenth century that research programmes began to appear investigating this question. Coen looks particularly at the private correspondence of Emanuel Purkyně (Czech, prof of Natural Science @ large forestry school). His contribution to the W-K-F was to conclude that it could not be answered generally, but was entirely local in nature (i.e.. he called for a re-scaling, there it is again). This eventual re-scaling meant shifting the W-K-F from a matter of imperial legislation to one of local action and research. Here Coen helpfully reminds the reader that the “global” of the nineteenth century was definitely not the same “global” of the twentieth century.
Chapter 10 (Floral Archive)
Covers the contribution of botanists in answering questions about climatic variability. The botanist she focuses on is Anton Kerner von Marilaun's, particularly his very vivid and poetic observations of flora and their environments. Scaling in Kerner's work expressed itself in the importance of building a network of collaborators such that the botanist never succumbs to narrowness. The link to climatology for example was made in his observation of plant-seeds drifting through the air on Alpine air currents (explaining the movement of plants). Kerner eventually produced the "Floral map" of Austria-Hungary (in the Kroonprinzenwerk), which depicted the Empire as an intersection between 4 distinct flora (Alpine (Red), Baltic (Green), Pontic (Yellow), Mediterranean (Pink)) (307-309). Essential in his methodology was the use of plants as scaling tools (vegetation as a metric of distance, familiar vegetarian being a sign of cultural proximity, etc.).
Chapter 11 (Landscapes of Desire)
Covers the private side of scaling, or rather the affective experience of the Imperial-Royal scientist, dominated by the theme of desire. Themes of longing & nostalgia pervade personal writings of Julius Hann. There was also the sexual nature of the human-climate relationship, stressed by Heinz Ficker (what an appropriate name). Ficker's writings in particular blended human customs with local climates (here scaling is being demonstrated by the intimate link between climate and local human culture – more what you might expect to find in the field of human geography nowadays.
Conclusion: After Empire
In her Epilogue Coen looks more at the post-WWI context of Austrian climate science. She mentions how German nationalists perverted the Habsburg tradition of dynamic climatology, believing no longer in the concept of unity in diversity, but returning to an older view of climate as static and regional (and highly tied to local customs). There were new trends that signalled both a scaling down and a scaling up of climatology. Scaling down was seen in the increased focus on urban climates, and was probably helped by the literal shrinking of Austria’s borders post-1919. But a scaling up can be seen in the increase in scientific internationalism and the proliferation of conferences. Coen also offers some takeaways for the modern-day climate crisis: environmental science should not be left entirely in the hands of nation-states; conservation should not be another tool for governments/corporations to exploit the land; measures to protect populations from the (changing) climate should not exacerbate inequalities. But on a more individual level, Coen argues that today's climate scientists steer well clear of moral standpoints, whilst some will maintain that thinking about a problem this big is beyond human capacity. But the brain can be recalibrated to new scales or proportionalities through new modes of representation and ways of looking. It also relies on kinesthesis (embodied experience), and multiple individuals working together. "Scaling" is ultimately the fundamental ingredient of climate science, and will continue to be. "Future research might consider how other scientific and political institutions, coupled to different infrastructures and different aesthetic cultures, have supported the work of scaling, and with what consequences for other domains of environmental knowledge" (361).
Chunky Synopsis for the Fans/me when I need to refer back to this:
Chapter 1 (Collection of Nature)
Covers the iconography of the Habsburg empire, which was tightly bound with its geography and natural environment (Imperial fountain, Arcimboldo portrait of Rudolf II, Prague castle collection, etc). Cultures of collecting flourished since Renaissance (Wunderkammers, collections at Habsburg courts, etc), and some of the earliest traditions of (scientific) weather observation originate in the Habsburg Empire. Attention to the fidelity of animate and inanimate objects extended to the study of provinces of the empire, and eventually materialised into early provincial museums (the earliest being the Johanneum in Graz, (1811)). These allowed patriotic scholars to write about regional natural histories, as well as encourage new scientific work (e.g. Edward Suess, who drew from case reports of an earthquake in 1590 kept in Lower Austrian provincial archive for his contemporary work on earthquakes). Ultimately, the natural sciences and histories of the nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire grew out of a tradition of collecting nature dating back to the Renaissance.
Chapter 2 (Austrian Idea)
Covers the use of geography & ecology by scientists and patriotic writers to define and justify the Habsburg Empire. Coen starts with some political, cultural, social histories of Austro-Hungarian unity, and proposes a different way of looking at this: as well as looking directly at ideas of unity, we should also look resources people could draw from when thinking about unity (related to this metaphorical concept of scaling). The strong link between nature and society had political, social, and economic implications, and fostered the idea of diversity as a central theme.
Chapter 3 (The Imperial-Royal Scientist)
Covers the professional identity of a generation of Austro-Hungarian ‘imperial scientists’ (1840s-50s). Many of these leading climate scientists began their careers as renowned local naturalists – a very interdisciplinary concept: “this was an age when scientists were encouraged to observe and collect as widely as possible, so it was common for a researcher to harvest specimens of several disciplines at once, carrying the equipment necessary to each" (75). The famous Kronprinzenwerk (Julius Hann, 1887) was a quintessential example of such "car-window climatology", which became a veritable Habsburg genre of climate science (79). There was also an emphasis in Habsburg climatology on full-bodied and multisensory observations (what Edmund Husserl called the “prescientific experience” c.1900: modern natural science grew out of prescientific experience, which is characterised in large part by kinesthesis - the observer moves around the (observed) object in space and time and observes it thus. "According to Eduard Suess, it was a supreme virtue of geological field research that it brought the scientist into contact with new cultures as well as new landscapes. In this way, Suess argued, earth science could provide an ethical education, a prophylactic against nationalist demagoguery" (88). I find this an interesting take - especially since nowadays there is a lot of scepticism about the scientific gaze (especially in ethnography) and scientists' ability to understand local cultures. Again, we see the importance of scaling, this time imbued with a more personal, political quality.
Chapter 4 (The Dual Task):
Covers the geophysical observing network in Vienna 1840s-50s, and how it had the dual task of treating the atmosphere as a laboratory for investigating natural laws, and as a part of a global system. This period saw a flourishing of scientific academies (notably the Vienna Academy of Sciences (1847)). The Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) became described as both a public (public good) and private (private institution) institution. But the scientist himself also was imbued with three kinds of duality: 1) gaining international prestige whilst catering to local needs, 2) being both a scholar and a civil servant, 3) pursuing the universal laws of geophysics, as well as the local phenomena within the empire's borders (100).
Chapter 5 (Face of the Empire):
Covers the task of visualising ‘unity in diversity’, the "Austrian problem" of the nineteenth century. Here Coen looks at mapmaking, but also at the early-nineteenth century emergence of “Vaterlandskunde”: an umbrella discipline that was both naturalistic and humanistic. Visualising the fatherland involved emphasising vivid details (e.g. Friedrich simony adding background details to his landscape photographs), as well as developing new (i.e. post-Humboldtian) ways of representing climates. By the end of the century, maps were being made with massive scales, which allowed for more nuance and a better visualisation of weather (and by implication cultural) phenomena. Colour schemes were also important. Whereas in the German lands maps were being made with a two-tone colour scheme (green for grasslands and brow for mountains), in the Habsburg Empire, maps included more colour variations such as a pale blue for the tops of mountains that were always covered in frost (Franz van Hauslab’s system (138)).
Chapter 6 (Invention of Climatography)
Covers the development of the term "Climatography", which entered English in 1813, and was used in German by the 1830s. Julius Hann rejected (1883) the Humboldtian definition of climate in terms of human perceptions, arguing that it was too anthropocentric - climate concerned all living things (148). We may justifiably distinguish between Habsburg climatography and Humboldtian/Romantic climatography. This distinction was especially brought out in the concept of dynamism (movement in nature, multiplicity of factors, etc.), which was key in the former. Dynamism was linked to a classic Habsburg metaphor: unity as musical harmony. (166-67). Although climate “change” was not a common concept, given that climate was initially considered ahistorical, the constant question of scale, movement, and circulation meant a notion of climate change became embedded in climate science (169). This inherent meaning is still significant today. Coen uses an IPCC example from 2012, which referred to the sociological issue of modern-day climate change as not only a problem of translating the words but also a problem of communicating their meaning – if Joseph the Tanzanian boy does not conceive of climate has something that is dynamic, will he understand the climate scientist who tells him that the climate is changing (a nice example I think).
Chapter 7 (Power of Local Differences)
Covers the link between Habsburg ideology and the physics of atmospheres: dynamic climatology provided tools for individuals to make decisions about their own economic and physical wellbeing, and the metaphor of balancing out neighbouring contrasts helped to neutralize the political structure of the Empire. By the 1870s climatology had become very visible in the public sphere, and thus its concepts of dynamism adopted very public meanings as well. Local differences would cause circulation, leading to an "evening out" of oppositions – you can see how this may apply both in an atmospheric as well as a political sense.
Chapter 8 (Planetary Disturbances)
Covers the physical-mathematical description of the atmosphere (formed by figures like Hann, Morgules, Supan, etc.), which provided more scaling tools (e.g. small-scale fluid models , turbulent flow models,... ) that allowed climatologists to solve, in principle, for the "planetary-scale consequences of human-scale disturbances”. Circa 1900 is also when climatologists also started to make use of mimetic models, i.e. models that looked like what was happening in nature (see Peter Galison’s work). They were still controversial (already since the previous century), but also had an aesthetic appeal for people ordinarily occupied with number-crunching. However, these models only started to gain the attention of leading international researchers in the mid-twentieth century, when digital computers were beginning to be used, but until then they were particularly useful for people with micro-climatological concerns (e.g. farmers, fishermen).
Chapter 9 ( Forest-Climate question)
The final three chapters focus more on the social and personal dimensions of scaling processes, and draw from more intimate diary entries and correspondences. This chapter covers the Wald-Klima-Frage (W-K-F), or desiccation theory: the idea that clearing an area of vegetation led to reduced rainfall. Although the socio-politics and legal history of forests stretches back much further, it is in the latter half of the nineteenth century that research programmes began to appear investigating this question. Coen looks particularly at the private correspondence of Emanuel Purkyně (Czech, prof of Natural Science @ large forestry school). His contribution to the W-K-F was to conclude that it could not be answered generally, but was entirely local in nature (i.e.. he called for a re-scaling, there it is again). This eventual re-scaling meant shifting the W-K-F from a matter of imperial legislation to one of local action and research. Here Coen helpfully reminds the reader that the “global” of the nineteenth century was definitely not the same “global” of the twentieth century.
Chapter 10 (Floral Archive)
Covers the contribution of botanists in answering questions about climatic variability. The botanist she focuses on is Anton Kerner von Marilaun's, particularly his very vivid and poetic observations of flora and their environments. Scaling in Kerner's work expressed itself in the importance of building a network of collaborators such that the botanist never succumbs to narrowness. The link to climatology for example was made in his observation of plant-seeds drifting through the air on Alpine air currents (explaining the movement of plants). Kerner eventually produced the "Floral map" of Austria-Hungary (in the Kroonprinzenwerk), which depicted the Empire as an intersection between 4 distinct flora (Alpine (Red), Baltic (Green), Pontic (Yellow), Mediterranean (Pink)) (307-309). Essential in his methodology was the use of plants as scaling tools (vegetation as a metric of distance, familiar vegetarian being a sign of cultural proximity, etc.).
Chapter 11 (Landscapes of Desire)
Covers the private side of scaling, or rather the affective experience of the Imperial-Royal scientist, dominated by the theme of desire. Themes of longing & nostalgia pervade personal writings of Julius Hann. There was also the sexual nature of the human-climate relationship, stressed by Heinz Ficker (what an appropriate name). Ficker's writings in particular blended human customs with local climates (here scaling is being demonstrated by the intimate link between climate and local human culture – more what you might expect to find in the field of human geography nowadays.
Conclusion: After Empire
In her Epilogue Coen looks more at the post-WWI context of Austrian climate science. She mentions how German nationalists perverted the Habsburg tradition of dynamic climatology, believing no longer in the concept of unity in diversity, but returning to an older view of climate as static and regional (and highly tied to local customs). There were new trends that signalled both a scaling down and a scaling up of climatology. Scaling down was seen in the increased focus on urban climates, and was probably helped by the literal shrinking of Austria’s borders post-1919. But a scaling up can be seen in the increase in scientific internationalism and the proliferation of conferences. Coen also offers some takeaways for the modern-day climate crisis: environmental science should not be left entirely in the hands of nation-states; conservation should not be another tool for governments/corporations to exploit the land; measures to protect populations from the (changing) climate should not exacerbate inequalities. But on a more individual level, Coen argues that today's climate scientists steer well clear of moral standpoints, whilst some will maintain that thinking about a problem this big is beyond human capacity. But the brain can be recalibrated to new scales or proportionalities through new modes of representation and ways of looking. It also relies on kinesthesis (embodied experience), and multiple individuals working together. "Scaling" is ultimately the fundamental ingredient of climate science, and will continue to be. "Future research might consider how other scientific and political institutions, coupled to different infrastructures and different aesthetic cultures, have supported the work of scaling, and with what consequences for other domains of environmental knowledge" (361).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 13, 2020
super compelling thesis about climate science (in the Austro-Hungarian context particularly) being a matter of navigating between scales (small vs large, individual vs empire, individual vs environment, etc). the organization of the chapters really highlights the embodied and emotional experiences of the people gathering climate data. pretty easy and enjoyable read!
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January 16, 2019Hi,
This is a truly amazing book, a bit of slog in the early chapters, but finishes strong with important messages for the world in which we live today. It covers the diversity of science with regards to geography, climate and meteorology as it developed in the 1800’s (and early 1900’s) in the Hapsburg (Austin Hungarian) Empire. The issue of scaling of science really becomes apparent in later chapters as the author delves into the lives of multiple and very notable researchers. At times the author tell how they suffered to continue to publish and accomplish fieldwork, throughout the book the author weaves imagery of the landscapes within the Hapsburg empire and what it meant to be Royal Scientist and how to best represent that in research.
This is a truly amazing book, a bit of slog in the early chapters, but finishes strong with important messages for the world in which we live today. It covers the diversity of science with regards to geography, climate and meteorology as it developed in the 1800’s (and early 1900’s) in the Hapsburg (Austin Hungarian) Empire. The issue of scaling of science really becomes apparent in later chapters as the author delves into the lives of multiple and very notable researchers. At times the author tell how they suffered to continue to publish and accomplish fieldwork, throughout the book the author weaves imagery of the landscapes within the Hapsburg empire and what it meant to be Royal Scientist and how to best represent that in research.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews