Coping with the immediate experience of climate

Regional variations and indoor trajectories

Bibliographic Data

ID12929643
AuthorsRussell Hitchings (0000-0002-1171-8064, University College London, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume2
Issue2
Pages170-184
Publication date2011-02-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1757-7780 • E-ISSN: 1757-7799
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/wcc.106
OpenAlexW1494846455
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited78

This article reviews work from across various disciplines that illuminates the changing ways in which people around the world manage their experience of local climate with particular reference to temperature. This topic is important because it has implications for issues that range from the rising energy demands associated with the spread of air‐conditioning to the idea that future societies may eventually forget about the climates outside the buildings into which they have retreated. My purpose is neither to critique the various ways of conceptualizing the relation between human comfort and thermal environment nor to champion any particular argument about the mechanism that guides its development over time. Rather the aim is to integrate a diverse set of studies into an evaluative account that foregrounds the cultural differences and geographical dynamics now characterizing the ways in which people relate to outdoor temperature. Many of us now spend a great deal of our time surrounded by controlled bodies of ambient air which may superficially seem appropriately civilized. Yet this same situation could easily end up making us less willing to experience our local climates and more reliant on some quite resource hungry technologies. Changing practices of coping with outdoor temperature should be examined further. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 170–184 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.106 This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > World Historical Perspectives

Argument (complex analysis · Champion · Climate change · Coping (psychology · Environmental ethics · Political science · Sociology · Building Energy and Comfort Optimization · Law · Psychology · Urban Heat Island Mitigation · Ecology

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