Syed Ali Mehdi Zaidi
Field of Interest(s)
Anthropocene
Urban Heat Islands
Global Warming
Thermal Inequality
Infrastructure
Urbanism
Public Life and Environment
Urban Ecology
I study the Social life of Heat in the time of the Anthropocene. With rising global temperatures and increased incidents of heat waves across the world, I am interested in understanding how heat mediates everyday life in Karachi. An inability to escape heat marks out sweating and tired bodies as dirty, unkempt, unprofessional. The heat makes public life difficult and divides the city into air conditioned and non-air conditioned zones. The same happens within households where heat mediates the gendering of households pushing women, children, and the powerless into hot zones like the kitchen while the powerful occupy colder, often air conditioned areas. Though the city as a whole heats up more than its surrounding areas, not all parts of the city heat up at the same rate. Thermal inequality often recreates inequalities of class, ethnicity, gender and caste literally heating up the marginalized. I am interested in understanding what socio-political factors exacerbate the problem of heat both within a city and across the globe. I study the slow destruction heat causes and how people respond to it. Not only in utilizing different types of technologies to reduce heat, but also by learning to sleep, eat, dress and bathe strategically. What language do people use to make sense of and respond to heatwaves and increased overall heat? I hope to understand heat not only as an issue of weather but also of socio-political processes.
I occasionally tweet at @teri_marx_ki about things publicly important to me.
