Paper short abstract:

Air-conditioning consumes 60% of the domestic electrical load in Bahrain. This is not simply due to Bahrain's hot climate. Rather, this paper argues that the proliferation of air-conditioning is also related to the electrical grid and the historical and political context in which it evolved.

Paper long abstract:

The abundance of air-conditioning in Bahrain is not simply connected to high temperatures but also to a particular configuration of the electrical grid. As the arrival of electricity in Bahrain co-emerged with colonial demands for cooling, it resulted in a technical configuration through which cheap and readily available air-conditioning became a key aspiration. This aspiration intensified following independence, generating a mode of citizenship predicated on comfort security. While the state maintains stability through overdesigning its infrastructures to provide uninterrupted comfort, citizens negotiate their entitlements by pursuing unauthorized cooling that compromises the grid. Infrastructural overdesign rests on the work of engineers who overestimate and reproduce cooling expectations but who can also facilitate the procurement of unauthorized overloads. Focusing on infrastructural overcapacity, this article illuminates how techno-politics can take excessive forms and how it can consequently shape everyday, sensory life.