Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes how the local environments and cultural, intergenerational understandings of temperature and adaptation affect older adults’ physiological reactions to heat in Warsaw and Madrid.

Paper long abstract

Europe is one of the fastest heating continents, due to anthropogenic climate crisis (EEA 2024). In this paper, we want to analyze in what way various cultural, biological and environmental conditions affect people’s experiences of heat, their physiological reactions and adaptation capabilities.

This paper builds on ethnographic research conducted in 2021-2022 in Warsaw (Poland) and Madrid (Spain). We conducted research with adults above 65 years old, who due to both social and biological factors are considered especially vulnerable to heat stress. Our research consisted of participant observation, walk-alongs, interviews and temperature measurements with ten older adults in each city conducted over the summers of 2021 and 2022. We also conducted participatory workshops, focus group interviews and co-created an ethnographic film “La Ola!” in Madrid.

Building on the concept of local biologies (Lock 1993) and situated biologies (Niewöhner and Lock 2018), we want to consider how the local environment and cultural understandings of temperature affect older adults’ biological reactions and embodied experiences of heat. We are interested in the similarities and differences between Warsaw and Madrid. Warsaw historically grappled more with cold, whereas now is forced to adapt to increasing summer heat. Whereas Madrid has a much longer cultural history of managing and adapting to urban heat, but now has to live through 40°C summers. By focusing on older adults’ situated biologies of heat, we want to demonstrate what anthropological research contributes to a more complex understanding of climate change and increasing heat’s effects on people’s health and wellbeing.