Paper short abstract:

I focus on practices of (atmospheric) care by two humans and a dog experiencing homelessness in Las Vegas, discuss their exposure to heat as environmental violence and being governed with climate, and suggest doing anthropology in the patchy Anthropocene as a co-crafting of ecologies of support.

Paper long abstract:

Being set up in a desert at a spot where water can be made accessible, heat has been present in the city of Las Vegas from the very beginning of its settler-colonial history. On the one hand, aiming at undoing its elemental condition, Vegas has been inventing itself as a patchwork of indoor atmospheres providing entertainment and adventure, as well as shelter and escape from climatic and other realities. On the other hand, the city has one of the highest homeless populations in the US, and for them, the entrance to the ‘air-conditioned cowboy’ (Al 2017) is prohibited. This paper pays attention to the practices of weathering (the heat of) Vegas by an entanglement of two humans and a dog experiencing homelessness. Thinking with Starosielski (2021), I understand the structural limitation of their access to shade, water, and cooled-down places as environmental ‘thermal violence’ and a form of being governed with/through climate. The paper unfolds the entanglement's creative and subversive practices of modulating their atmospheric envelope (McCormack 2018) by enmeshing themselves in ‘ecologies of support’ (Duclos & Sánchez Criado 2020) while claiming and negotiating public space. Building on the notion of care as a relational form of labor with a speculative feature (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017), I discuss these practices as multispecies atmospheric care. Finally, I suggest doing anthropology in the patchy Anthropocene as the co-crafting of ecologies of support.