Perceptions of atmosphere: Air, waste, and narratives of life and work in Mumbai

Abstract

How do residents on the socioeconomic margins of the city experience and perceive atmosphere? How does the concept of atmosphere change when we write it from a context of impoverished and stigmatized residents? Drawing on research in neighborhoods near Mumbai’s largest garbage ground, Deonar, we seek to advance a growing body of work on urban atmosphere. We examine how atmosphere operates materially and affectively through different and changing relations between air, waste, work, environment, and social conditions. The accounts from residents revolve around a set of recurring issues – health, smell, fire, and stagnant and contaminated water – through which different perceptions of atmosphere take shape. This reading both informs the pluralization and extension of understandings of atmosphere, from questions of health and bodily damage to social anxieties linked to stigma, and reveals atmosphere as an index of poverty and inequality. We argue for the value of a research focus on “perceptions of atmosphere” as part of a situated geography of atmosphere on the margins, and as a basis for understanding urban poverty, inequalities, and politics.

Attuning to ambiguous atmospheres: Currents of air, discourse and time in a steel town

“…Such complexity defies straightforward characterisation, and the resulting ambiguous atmosphere is one filled with tensions; between near and far, and between the town's past, present and future. To this end, our analysis, similarly to that of Tripathy and McFarlane (2022), contributes to geographic explorations of urban atmospheres an understanding of how atmospheres are differently experienced and known, and how residential perceptions of their local atmosphere might persist or change over different timescales (e.g., daily, annually, biographical).…”

Assembling high-rise: The uneven agencies of air in suburban densification in the Anthropocene

“…heat/cold, dry/moist), elemental approaches conceptualise air as a state of ‘compositional suspension’ (Adey, 2015: 60). Phenomenological perspectives further centre air as an elemental force that contributes to affective atmospheres that envelop, expand and contract urban conditions in the co-production of landscapes and subjectivities that unsettle the distinctions between air, city and body (Adey, 2013; Anderson, 2009; Engelmann, 2015; Ghertner, 2020; Tripathy and McFarlane, 2022). Through the process of breathing, air challenges idealised conceptualisations of the body as an ‘imagined space of purity’ (Balayannis and Garnett, 2020: 6; Bickerstaff and Walker, 2003; Engelmann, 2015; Peterson, 2021), and bounded understandings of ‘inside/outside’, foregrounding air as an agentic force ‘in the composition of landscape, social conditions and subjectivities’ (Engelmann, 2015: 441; Ingold, 2010; Ruiz and Jue, 2021).…”

Density and pandemic urbanism: Exposure and networked density in Manila and Taipei

“…The research discussed here is part of a broader European Research Council supported research project, DenCity , that compares dimensions of high-density urban living (e.g. Chen et al, 2020; Chowdhury and McFarlane, 2022; Habermehl and McFarlane, 2023; Joiner et al, 2022; McFarlane, 2021; Tripathy and McFarlane, 2022). The research in Manila and Taipei took place from winter 2020 to late summer 2021, focussing on how cities managed and experienced the pandemic, and was supplemented by additional research trips and monitoring into late 2022.…”