Feel the Heat

Our workshop on ‘Heat and Health: Bodies, Environments, and Unequal Thermal Worlds’ at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the University Alliance Ruhr could not have been held at a more apropos time. The week of 21^st to 28^th June was one of the hottest weeks on record in Europe and in Germany. Images of roads and traffic signals melting flooded the internet and we were worried about travel as there were widespread cancellations of trains due to the heatwave. On the morning of our workshop on the 26^th, the organising team was scrambling to get fans to ensure that participants were comfortable. It would emerge later that 26^th June was the hottest day of the year in Essen at 38 degrees Celsius.

The worry that it was too hot for people to be able to work dominated the thoughts of the organisers. This was not an ordinary worry – a few years ago, this concern would never have surfaced in our consciousness. But this year we had to include heat as the first item in our list of contingencies. We sweated through our two dinners and instead of lingering after our meals, as is the convention in academic workshops, we chose to leave the clammy heat of the restaurants – at least for our external participants there was the prospect of refuge and rest in the air-conditioned environs of their hotels. 

For those of us who lived at home, like Sreeparna, even three cold showers a day and a pedestal fan were insufficient to allow the body to rest and recover as the mercury kept rising with an average of 60 percent humidity, making the heat feel much worse. In fact, as the chart indicates, the average high for that month – just below 24 degrees – was less than the minimum temperature for that particular day. 

For researchers, their subject of research is often examined at a distance, removed from the self. But for those of us who work on heat, the distinctions between what is subjective or objective, or what we feel and what we think, are less clear. Drawing on Descartes’ famous statement, “Cogito, ergo sum” – “I think, therefore I am”, in the era of extreme heat, we might instead say: “Sentio, ergo sum” – “I feel, perceive, experience, therefore I am.” 

Debates about Air-Conditioning in Germany: At the Centre of an Uncomfortable Tension 

The discussions around air-conditioning have particular salience for Germany because cooling has historically occupied a very different cultural and infrastructural position here. Germany’s temperate climate meant that buildings were largely organised around keeping warm rather than staying cool. Air-conditioning has often been viewed as unnecessary or even unhealthy, and practices such as opening windows, using blinds or simply adjusting one’s behaviour (drink more water, wear fewer clothes!) have long been treated as sufficient. Yet as summers become hotter, this approach to thermal comfort is changing. During the workshop itself, questions that might once have seemed trivial – whether hotels had air-conditioning or whether a conference room could be ventilated – became crucially intertwined with the very subject we had gathered to discuss. Air-conditioning thus sits at the centre of an uncomfortable tension: it is resource-intensive and contributes to energy demand and ambient heat, but under certain conditions it may also become a necessary means of protecting bodies, especially in hospitals, schools and nursing homes.

Heat Protection as a Matter of Governance

Our US-American participant Camille Frazier  compared Bangalore and California to demonstrate the extent to which state responsiveness can help mitigate some of the worst impacts of heat. She showed how heat becomes a matter of governance through state planning, vulnerability mapping, and targeted adaptation measures. At the same time, her comparison highlighted that even where heat is institutionally recognised, protection remains uneven, particularly for workers and communities who continue to face high levels of exposure. 

By the end of the workshop, “Sentio, ergo sum” had acquired a more political meaning. What and how we feel in a warming world depends on the homes we inhabit, the work we perform, the infrastructures available to us and the protection we receive. Feeling the heat therefore also means recognising the social arrangements that allow some bodies to remain cool while others are left to sweat, strain and endure.