Heating and cooling places: Justice claims on energy behind the front door

Abstract

Answers to ‘what energy is for’ might differ between professionals and residents living in lower-income neighborhoods. By combining ethnographic interviews and creative methods, we engage with residents to analyze justice claims in relation to places for keeping warm and cool in and around the home. Justice claims are normative answers to questions concerning justice. For instance, answers to questions such as: which and whose places for keeping warm and cool should (not) exist, and whose energy consumption should (not) reduce. We highlight three ways in which residents' justice claims emerge from places for keeping warm and cool. First, we discuss how places are perceived, conceived and lived in diverse ways. For residents, place does not only concern the size of the home and its location, but also e.g., the layout of the home, implicated objects, the diverse (human) bodies involved, the sensorial and lived experience. Different justice claims emerge from diverse configurations of places for keeping warm and cool. Second, the temporal dynamics of places for keeping warm and cool connect to justice claims. Instead of focusing on heating and cooling static rooms or houses, we propose a focus on heating and cooling dynamic places. Lastly, residents adjust places in and around their rented home. Meanwhile, an empty standardized home is easier to renovate but contrasts with reality. This tension leads to emerging justice claims. Current renovation standards diminish possibilities for tenants to adjust places for keeping warm and cool. Failing to take residents' situated justice claims seriously, risks misrecognition.