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Paper short abstract:

Using Nancy Fraser’s concept of boundary struggles, the rising global demands for air-conditioning are representative of emerging discourse negotiating the distribution of vulnerability during heat waves, resulting from contradictions between the foreground and background conditions of capitalism.

Paper long abstract:

Inequitable access to air-conditioning is paradigmatic of incoming (and ongoing) struggles over development exacerbated by climate change, occurring at what Nancy Fraser identifies as boundaries between the foreground and background conditions of capitalism: between the economy and ecosystem health, political power, and social reproduction. Within ecology, the construction of isolated interiors in opposition to climate-changed exteriors redistribute vulnerability through the built environment. Within the political sphere, norms produced by externalization societies and the imperial mode of living contribute to the destabilization of peripheral societies, causing them to opt-in to technologies such as air-conditioning, which individualizes security responses to climate change. Within social reproduction, air-conditioning is developed as a technology selling comfort as a consumer preference, imposing discomfort upon subaltern populations. The increasing demand for air-conditioning is thus representative of emerging discourse negotiating the global distribution of vulnerability, discomfort, and death during heat waves, mediated by access to cooling technologies.