Paper short abstract:

This roundtable contribution reflects on how studying fire through ethnographically grounded methods can inform the ways in which we think about heat and its convergences with weather, infrastructure, capital and labour, particularly from the perspective of cities in the Global South.

Paper long abstract:

Amid the intensification of anthropogenic changes around the world, incidences of fire are commonly used to index the severity of heat as a global crisis. In the context of Delhi, identified as being among the cities most impacted by heat stress, a reflection of this can be found in the record number of fire calls received by the fire department each summer. By tying fire and rising temperatures along a temporality of accelerated change, such statistics, do not adequately capture how heat is lived with and managed in the everyday - particularly by those for whom exposure to heat and, in turn, encounters with fire, are directly connected to conditions of life and labour in the city. This includes firefighters, factory workers and waste pickers, to name a few.

Drawing on over 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi, my contribution to this roundtable discussion reflects on the uses of fire as a methodology for understanding the ‘illusive’ phenomenon of heat, particularly from the perspective of cities in the Global South. In the context of my own research, this has involved attuning to the varying temporalities of fire - as both a disastrous and mundane ‘event’ as well as a tool within processes of re/production. In drawing attention to the material and economic realities surrounding heat, fire complicates distinctions between risk, resource, work and hazard. As an ethnographic method, it offers new insights into how the relationships between weather, infrastructure and labour are being restructured within a warming world.