The Great Indoors: Research frontiers on indoor environments as active political-ecological spaces

Abstract

In this progress report we call for nature-society geographers to give greater attention to indoor environments as active political-ecological spaces. Nature-society geographers often treat such spaces as fixed and unnatural. Yet a growing body of research attests to the active role played by sites ranging from homes to factories to shopping malls in the production of nature, scale, and environmental citizens. Furthermore, environmentalist and public health projects have increasingly targeted indoor spaces for scrutiny and action, yet these projects and scientific literature typically lack a critical geographical perspective on scale, space, power, and nature. We argue that exploring indoor environments is necessary to fully encompass socio-natural assemblages that include flows of energy and knowledge, embodied subjects, technologies of power and resistance, and a variety of non-humans.

Unpacking the spaces and politics of energy poverty: path-dependencies, deprivation and fuel switching in post-communist Hungary

“…Despite the recognition that indoor environments represent fluid and open spaces that are connected to broader social and ecological systems (Biehler and Simon 2010), mainstream work on the dynamics of energy service deprivation largely focuses on a relatively narrow range of explanatory factors centring on the domestic setting (particularly micro-economic affordability, as well as the thermal efficiency of the dwelling, heating system or appliances -see Boardman 2010). There is a need for exploring how energy poverty is embedded in the broader system of infrastructural provision (Coutard 2002, Marvin 2012) and institutional change (Harrison and Popke 2011) while simultaneously affecting both the consumption structure and state policies that characterise energy flows.…”

Urban political ecologies of housing and climate change: The ‘Coolest Block’ Contest in Philadelphia

“…Graham & Marvin, 1994;Swyngedouw, 1997;Haughton, 1998;Bakker, 1999;Monstadt, 2009; for an exception focussing on waterfront redevelopment, see Hagerman, 2007). This is consistent with Biehler and Simon's (2011) observation that the 'indoor' remains a space largely untheorized in UPE, the analysis of which generally stops at the water meter, the electricity meter, or the boundaries of the public park.…”

Can Social Media Clear the Air? A Case Study of the Air Pollution Problem in Chinese Cities

“…This prescription is only available to the class of people who can afford expensive indoor air filtration technology; Pan's suggestion is simply out of reach for most Chinese citizens. Like PM2.5, power relations flow through spaces and buildings occupied by different people (Biehler and Simon 2011), in turn producing atmospheric subjects (Whitehead 2009). Chinese city-dwellers are sorted into the categories of those who can afford to adapt to air pollution and those who cannot.…”

“…Much air pollution research focuses on the outdoors, but Biehler and Simon (2011) have called on geographers to examine the indoors as politicalecological spaces that are both socially produced and inextricably linked with the outdoors. Although outdoor air is difficult to capture and commodify at the human scale, air conditioning and filtration can produce clean air indoors, for a price.…”