Doctoral Dissertation Research: Staying Cool: Heat, Air-Conditioning, and Everyday Comfort

空调已成为保持人类凉爽的主要技术解决方案。在非常短的时间内，这种能源密集型机器已经扩展到许多以前不存在的地方。然而，采用这种设备不仅仅是应对热量。在它已经变得司空见惯的地方，它不仅产生了对舒适的期望，而且塑造了日常生活。此外，技术并不是简单地被采用;它们在不同的地方制造时也会被改造和重新设计。这个项目调查空调如何影响和融入新的地方和文化，并被它们改变。因此，这项研究有助于通过更好地了解其社会和文化层面来规范空调的使用。在这样做的过程中，它有助于理解关键技术如何在新的环境中运作，以及技术在新的社会和环境背景下重新设计的实际和概念劳动。研究结果将在学术会议和学术期刊上传播，该项目更广泛的成果包括与对城市环境问题感兴趣的基层组织举办讲座和讲习班，以及研究生导师和培训。在过去的几年里，空调的使用和负荷在干旱环境中急剧增加。 这些地区不仅是空调的消费者，也是为当地和国际市场制造机器的生产者。在这些环境中，当地对空调的依赖，加上炎热的气候和积极的空调制造，使它们成为研究技术改变地方和人的相互过程的理想背景，反过来又被他们改变。本课题将通过历史研究和实地考察的方法，对以下三个过程进行考察：（1）空调的引进及其对建筑和日常生活的影响;（2）空调的制造和维持其运行的电网的管理;（3）低、中、高收入家庭的日常冷热体验。这项研究还将有助于学术和政策讨论空调消费的增长，通过展示如何不仅负担得起和不适塑造其使用;它也与特定文化价值观的发展交织在一起。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Air conditioning has become the primary technological solution for keeping humans cool. In a remarkably short period of time, this energy-intensive machine has spread to many places where it previously did not exist. Adoption of this device, however, involves more than coping with heat. In places where it has become commonplace, it not only produces expectations of comfort, but shapes everyday routines. Furthermore, technologies are not simply adopted; they also are adapted and re-designed when manufactured in different places. This project investigates how air-conditioning affects and becomes integrated into new places and cultures and is also altered by them. This research thus contributes to efforts to regulate air-conditioning use by offering a better understanding of its social and cultural dimensions. In doing so, it contributes to understanding of how key technologies are made operational in new contexts, and of the practical and conceptual labor by which technologies are re-designed for new social and environmental contexts. Findings will be disseminated at academic conferences and in scholarly journals, and the project’s broader outcomes include delivering lectures and holding workshops with grassroots organizations interested in urban environmental issues, and graduate student mentorship and training. Over the past few years, air-conditioning use and load have increased dramatically in arid environments. These regions are not only consumers of air-conditioning, but also producers who manufacture machines for local and international markets. The local reliance on air-conditioning in these environments, coupled with their hot climate and active manufacturing of air conditioners, make them an ideal context to investigate the reciprocal processes by which technology transforms places and people, and is in turn transformed by them. This project will examine three processes through historical research and field methods: (1) The introduction of air-conditioning and its effect on architecture and daily routines, (2) The manufacture of air-conditioning and the management of the electric grid that sustains its operation, and (3) Everyday experiences of cooling and heat exposure among low, middle, and high-income families. This study will also contribute to academic and policy discussions on the growing consumption of air-conditioning by demonstrating how not only affordability and discomfort shape its use; it is also intertwined with the development of specific cultural values. This brings the project into dialogue with broader concerns related to energy sustainability and the future of thermal comfort in urban centers worldwide.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.