Strengersmaller2013gettingcomfortabletasa251113

Getting comfortable: the materiality of weather in household heating and cooling practices Yolande Strengers and Cecily Maller

Centre for Urban Research, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne AUSTRALIA

The Sociological Association of Australia (TASA) Conference25-28 November, Monash University

Global trends in thermal comfort

• Globally indoor temperatures are homogenising (Winter 2013, Hitchings and Lee 2008, Hitchings 2011)

–Australia: air-con ownership almost doubled since late 1990s to almost 75% (ABS 2011).

–Global trend towards 220C (Hitchings 2011)

• Common comfort assumptions dominate

–Mechanical heating and cooling necessary and unstoppable

–Everyone will use them the same

–Change is linear and homogenous

• Adaptive comfort research challenges this view (de Dear & Brager 2002)

–Humans experience climate differently

–Different cultures and communities adapt to climatic conditions and indoor environments in different ways

–People have reported being comfortable from 6 to 30+0 Celcius (Chappells & Shove 2004)

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Experiencing climate through weather

• Limited work on role of climate in adaptive comfort• Climate is recorded, weather experienced’ (Ingold and Kurttila 2000: 187)

• ‘Climate and long-term climate change takes expression through specific local weather patterns’ (de Vet 2013: 1)

• Weather experienced and ‘materialised’ as temperature, rainfall, snow, sunshine, humidity and wind.

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Image source: http://www.zastavki.com/eng/Nature/Clouds/wallpaper-28618.htm

RMIT University©2013 Centre for Urban Research

Studying weather as a material element of practice

• A practice is ‘a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other’ (Reckwitz 2002a: 249).

• ‘“Artefacts” and “things” necessarily participate in social practices just as human beings do’ (Reckwitz 2002b: 208).

• Rantala et al.’s (2011) study of wilderness guiding practices proposes that weather has agency which is exerted through practice.

–Weather is both ‘manipulated in social and material practices and ‘itself redirects human practices by narrowing down or extending the potentialities for outdoor activities’ (287)

–‘Weather is a material entity in itself and the interaction with weather involves a wide range of material objects’ (296)

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Image source: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/jan/27/wild-camping-lake-district-cumbria


The distributed agency of weather in practice

–‘Agentic capacities’ of different human and non-human actants (including weather) (Bennett 2005, Coole 2013).

– ‘… a distributive, composite notion of agency; an agency that includes the nonhumans with which we join forces or vie for control‘ (Bennett 2005: 448).

–Recognises that ‘…effective agency is always an assemblage … its emergence constituted by the interplay of human and no human materialities’ (Bennett 2005: 454).

–How are the agentic capacities of weather distributed within assemblages of heating and cooling practices, where they ‘join forces or vie for control’ with other elements of practice?

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Source: http://mmwempower.empowernetwork.com/blog/weird-weather/


Studying mobile practices and weather

• Draws on data from a study into the thermal comfort practices of a highly mobile population:

–International students in Melbourne, Australia

• 15 semi-structured ‘scrapbook’ interviews with international students studying in Melbourne, Australia.

• Home countries:

‒Europe, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Philippines, China, Vietnam

• Aim of broader study:

‒To understand dynamics involved in the globalisation of domestic energy and water-intensive practices.

• Key question for this paper:

–What material role does weather play in the adaptation of local heating and cooling practices?

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Variable and unpredictable weather: material disruptions• Melbourne’s weather experienced as highly variable:

– Interviewer: ‘Do you think that Australia is a hot or a cold country?’

– Libby (China): ‘It’s hard to say, because in Melbourne the weather change every minute [Laughter]’.

• Some students disliked Melbourne’s ‘ups and downs’ and missed constant and predictable weather.

– Carlo (Switzerland): ‘I really don’t like here the really hot days, like the 40 degree days, so they just kill me. I can’t move. [Laughter] But I don’t really miss the weather in Switzerland, except I like the fact that in Switzerland it’s constant. … I like the defined season. …I don’t really like the up and downs.’

• Weather exerted agentic capacity by disrupting practices and routines in a verymaterial sense.

• At times weather could incapacitate practice (e.g. ‘I can’t move’).

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Source: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/melbournes-weather-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-winter/story-e6frfku0-1225973730811


Experiencing ‘normal’ weather

• Understandings of Australia’s climate as hot or cold was relative to students’ current and past experiences with temperature from their home countries.

• Students from tropical climates thought Australia was a cold country.– Interviewer: ‘Do you think Australia is a hot or cold country?’

– Venus (Philippines): ‘Cold. Definitely cold for me.’

• Students from colder climates thought Australia was a hot country.

– Karl (Germany): ‘Germany has this really … four different seasons from really, really cold to hot. Yeah, and I think Australia is just always hot and even if we think it’s cold it’s just about 10 degrees or something.’

• Body as a sensorial filter–‘the perception of weather is multisensory. … One perceives, in

effect, with the whole body’ (Ingold and Kurtilla 2000: 189).

• Weather ‘memories’ as a form of agentic capacity?

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Weather memory as agentic capacity

• Nikolopoulou and Steemers (2003: 97) suggest that ‘…“memory” of weather experience directly affects people’s expectations’.

• ‘Expectations of climate, and their implicit categories of ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ weather, are … strongly influenced by … individual and collective experiences and memories’ (Hulme et al. 2009: 198).

• In past work we also argue that memories of past practices can inform current and future practices (Maller & Strengers 2013).

• Memories of ‘normal’ weather conditions provide immaterial agentic capacity about what is and isn’t comfortable which are interpreted through the body.

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Source: http://www.schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au/homework-and-study/other-subjects-and-projects/science/science-project-starters/weather-project


Adapting to the weather

• Students adapted to local conditions: the agentic capacities of weather changed as their bodies got used to local conditions.

– Indira (Canada): ‘Twelve degrees is freezing now, when usually -30 is freezing. .. Yes, well my tolerance level’s changed.’

– Tim (UK): ‘Just because it’s warmer. So I think my comfortable temperature has probably got warmer. Whereas at home … I can deal with being cold.’

• The ‘feel’ or material qualities of weather changed over time (deciphered through the body)

– Karl (Germany): ‘I’m feeling more cold and faster cold than in Germany. … It’s a different cold. In Germany it feels really warm when it’s 14 degrees. Yeah, when I came from Germany from Australia we have minus 12 degrees. And I have worn the same stuff and now I’m in Australia and I’m cold with that. So it’s weird. … because it’s not really cold here but I feel faster cold. So normally I wouldn’t wear a scarf in this temperature in Germany.’


Adapting to the weather: similar practices

• Students who ‘adapted’ to the weather performed similar practices to their home countries, despite significant climatic variations.

– Venus (Philippines):‘So we rarely wear thick clothes [now]. … We brought thin ones [to Australia]. And then when we arrived at the airport it’s like 17 degrees. Is this summer?! … So I think I won’t like the weather but as soon as we stay here for longer…’

– Angela: ‘We adapted.’

– Venus: ‘… we end up liking the weather as well.’


Image source: http://www.aldoshoesforalifetime.com/summer-clothes-gown-for-your-time

Uncomfortable weather: past practices

• Some students did not ‘get used to’ the weather over time

• Students drew on their experiences and ‘memories’ of past practices to inform their heat and cool comfort practices in Australia.

– Kim (South Korea): ‘Yeah [I feel the cold more in Australia], because I was so surprised that like, at my country we really don’t, because it’s really warm we, like sometimes we just wear shorts, but in here there’s no heating system, like that’s so my hands is like freezing, so I have to use this kind of thing.’

– Interviewer: ‘You use the hot water bottle?’

– Kim: ‘Yeah, it’s quite like, not usual sort of thing.’

• Absence of ‘normal’ materials of practice, combined with uncomfortable weather, prompted return to more ‘traditional’ and ‘low-tech’ practices.


Uncomfortable weather: new practices

• Some students participated in new heating and cooling practices to get comfortable

– Tran (Vietnam): ‘Oh, yeah. It’s a lot of differences [between Australia and Vietnam]. And …when I come here, is the very beginning of February, so I kind of enjoyed the mild, cool weather back then. But now it turn out to be for me too cool. And sometimes, it’s so crazy, because when you are cool you need to turn on the heater, but when you use too much heater you are going to dry out your skin. So I definitely hate it [the climate]. … but I think maybe I use – I’m going to use it whenever I’m home during the winter, because I cannot stand the col

• Materialities of ‘cold’ weather intersect with ‘dry air’ from the heater as experienced by the body.

• Agentic capacities distributed between bodies and technologies in practices of staying warm and cool.

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Image source: http://www.allaboutrental.com.au/category.php?category_id=29


Uncomfortable weather: local practices

• Students also actively adapted to local heat and cool comfort practice varieties as they experienced cooler/ warmer weather.

– Interviewer: “What is your usual method of staying cool in Australia?”

– Tran (Vietnam): “Maybe taking a bath. And wearing more sexy clothes! [Laughter] …Because I acknowledge that the weather is significantly different from the weather from my home country, so it is necessary for me to adopt the way of people here.”


Source: https://localloot.wordpress.com/tag/swimming/

Weather and the built environment

• The agentic capacities of weather also interacted with those of the built environment.

– Vicky (Canada): ‘In Canada it’s more, we have heaters everywhere; here is freezing so everywhere, I mean in my room I know is probably, I don’t know, under 10 degrees so…it’s freezing, but in Canada everywhere has heaters so it’s not cold at all.’

– Kim (South Korea): ‘But at Korea outside is cold, but inside, like department store everywhere, it’s really warm, even hot. … So at winter time when I go home it makes me cosy, but I think in here it’s just the same, like outside is cold; inside is cold.

• Some students needed to participate in other practices of keeping warm.


Image source: http://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/3770/draughty-pvc-window

Weather and the built environment

• Havier found that he didn’t need to use a heater in his Australian heat comfort practices because of the improved built environment compared with Mexico.

– Havier: ‘Where I live it’s like hot in summer and cold in winter and it rains a lot, just like here actually. … Like in Mexico I have the fireplace, like in my – like in another house I have like a real fireplace and we use that in winter. And here we just – we don’t have anything.’

– Interviewer: ‘You don’t? So how do you keep warm here?’

– Havier: ‘We don’t need to do that.’

– Interviewer: ‘You don’t need to keep warm?’

– Havier: ‘No.’

– Interviewer: ‘No? Why? Is it warm enough in your house?’

– Havier: ‘Yeah.’

• Agentic capacities of weather, heating technologies and housing distributed in practice


Summary of findings

• Unpredictable and variable weather experiences had material agentic capacity: they could incapacitate practices and/or disrupt routines, thereby materially disabling the body.

• Weather ‘memories’ filtered weather experiences through the body: they had immaterial agentic capacity.

• Weather’s agentic capacity changed over time.

• Students who experienced the weather similarly to their home countries performed similar practices to their home countries.

• Students who experienced weather differently to their home countries participated in past, new and local heating and cooling practices.

• Agentic capacities of the weather changed in relation to the built environment and other materials (or absence of them).

• Agentic capacities were distributed between heating and cooling technologies, the built environment, weather and the body

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Conclusions

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1. Climate informs everyday practice as local weather events and past weather experiences.

2. The relationship between weather and everyday practice is dynamic and changes over time in relation to the material make-up of practices.

3. International students, migrants, travellers, expatriates and other migratory groups represent pockets of diversity for studying ways of adapting to new climates and experiencing weather.

4. Studying materiality of weather important to inform understandings of thermal comfort adaptation.


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• This project was a Client-based Research Project for RMIT’s Bachelor of Social Science (Environment) program conducted by RMIT students in May 2012.

• Thanks to James Talbot-Kamoen and Jessica Lawandi for carrying out the data collection and preliminary analysis.

• Thanks to Anna Strempel for additional assistance with the data management.

Acknowledgements

Source: http://www.askelectricalltd.co.uk/images/main-image-heating-control.jpg

Centre for Urban Research

http://www.askelectricalltd.co.uk/images/main-image-heating-control.jpg

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