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Paper short abstract:

How do age, class and gender inequalities shape people’s experiences of urban heat and its impact on their health and wellbeing? Based on the case of older adults, this paper analyses experiencing urban heat and embodying climate change as a biosocial process.

Paper long abstract:

With the warming climate, excessive summer heat is becoming a daily reality for many people in the Anthropocene. Heat-related morbidity and mortality increases globally. But people’s lives are not affected equally, not only because of their geographical locations. Due to the combination of biosocial factors, adults above the age of 65 are considered one of the most vulnerable to heat stress groups. How do they cope and adapt? How are age, gender and class inequalities embedded in urban heat adaptation and people’s experiences?

This paper stems from an interdisciplinary project ‘Embodying Climate Change: Transdisciplinary Research on Urban Overheating’ (EmCliC) that brings together social anthropology, sociology, physics, environmental engineering, climate science and epidemiology to better understand older adults’ experiences of urban heat in two European locations: Warsaw and Madrid. This paper focuses on the notion of embodying heat and climate change. First, based on ethnographic research, I will discuss the age, class and gender inequalities related to heat stress and consider the impact of summer heat on older adults’ lives, health and wellbeing. Second, I will critically reflect on studying and operationalizing the notion of embodiment as a biosocial process in an interdisciplinary research. Is embodiment always connected to health? Can people embody positive aspects of climate change? Can we quantify embodiment? Based on the case of older adults and urban heat, the paper aims to theoretically and methodologically explore how people embody climate change.