CCA - Nick RAHIER - "Beyond temperature : Thermal Futuring in Nakuru, Kenya"

CCA - Beyond Temperature : Thermal Futuring in Nakuru, Kenya

Nick RAHIER

In Anthropocene debates, ‘heat’ has become a central metaphor through which politics, philosophy, and science articulate the urgency of planetary crisis. In many such contexts, heat is converted into temperature data, such as thermal thresholds, ecological tipping points, and algorithmic projections concerning the planet’s future viability. Yet, reducing heat to temperature metrics flattens the complexity of lived experience and erases the messy, affective, and uneven ways in which people inhabit, interpret, and respond to thermal change within specific socio-ecological contexts. My book talk breaks with temperature-based understandings of heat and delves into a richer, more emic exploration of its social and sensory dimensions. It presents a new form of measurement—not just heat in degrees, but measurements that allow to probe into the textures of emerging life under hotter conditions. Based on long-term fieldwork in Nakuru, Kenya, my talk explores how my interlocutors forge pathways into the future to sustain the very possibility of “cooler” horizons. Dr. Nick Rahier is a Postdoctoral Research Associate affiliated with CARAM (Centre for Anthropological Research on Affect and Materiality) and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven. His research examines the intersections of health, pollution, and environmental change in urban Kenya. He has a background in African Studies, coordinates the RESPIRA consortium on Chronic Respiratory Disease in Africa, leads a research project on eco-pesticide production in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda, and serves as Principal Investigator of a project on AI and citizen science for air quality monitoring in Nakuru, Kenya. His talk will draw on his forthcoming book, “City-Heat: Sensing Viable Futures in Nakuru, Kenya” that is forthcoming with University College London Press.