Paper short abstract:

Through ethnographic research in southern Chile's cold climate, I explore how "homely warmth" emerges as both thermal need and cultural metaphor, revealing how care practices transform structurally cold houses into warm homes.

Paper long abstract:

In southern Chile, where indoor temperatures frequently fall below 16°C during six to eight-month winters, this research examines how the concept of "homely warmth" (calor de hogar) operates as both material reality and cultural metaphor. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I analyze how residents—particularly women performing unpaid care work—strive to create and maintain "homely warmth" despite structural constraints of poorly insulated housing, a legacy of neoliberal policies.

The research reveals how "homely warmth" embodies a critical junction between physical comfort and social well-being. Women's practices of thermal care—from maintaining wood stoves to creating cozy gathering spaces—demonstrate how warmth is simultaneously negotiated through material interventions and social relations. These practices transform technically cold spaces into socially warm homes through combinations of traditional knowledge, improvised solutions, and careful management of domestic space.

This analysis contributes to understandings of heat by showing how "homely warmth" becomes a site of resistance where care work and material practices converge to create habitable spaces despite thermal precarity. The findings suggest that warmth in domestic spaces cannot be reduced to temperature measurements alone, but must be understood through the intricate ways people craft well-being at the intersection of thermal needs and social meaning.