Thermal Discomfort in Catalan Eco-Communities: Affects, Bodies and Repetition

This talk aims to explore how residents in two Catalan eco-communities have negotiated thermal discomfort in practice. These eco-communities, dedicated to living sustainably, communally and autonomously, have overwhelmingly renounced relying on (fossil-fuelled) energy grids and have attempted to produce warmth off-the-grid, mainly through wood heating and insulation practices. They also largely disregard Western thermal conventions for ‘healthy’ indoor temperatures as well as for health concerns around wood-heating. Considering how thermal discomforts are negotiated on site, including the contradictions that emerged can therefore be useful for informing interventions to effect change towards lower-carbon heating and sustainable living more generally in society at large. Building on David Bissell’s work on discomfort and stress and Jane Bennett’s theorisations of motivation, I conceive of thermal comfort as a contingent more-than-human achievement between human bodies, their proximate environment as well as of particular value sets. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I will tease apart the intricate dynamics between values and affects in three examples of how eco-community residents dealt with thermal discomfort and off-the grid heating.