A curiosity driven approach to air-conditioning on the Arabian Peninsula: Comparing the accounts of three resident groups in Qatar

Abstract

The assumption that people should be surrounded by air that has been cooled to meet their presumed needs encourages an undifferentiated and disengaged relationship between local climate and everyday life. It is also leading to huge, and growing, levels of energy consumption. One important research challenge is therefore to identify how existing variation in climate adaptation cultures might be harnessed in fighting the further spread of this assumption. Examining how different groups see their relationship with air-conditioning could be part of this and Doha, the capital of Qatar, provides an excellent place in which to explore the potential of such a strategy. Air-conditioning was eagerly adopted by Qataris after the nationalisation of their oil and gas reserves soon made them some of the wealthiest people in the world. In recent years, however, local officials have started to consider the social and environmental benefits of other ways of living with the desert heat. This paper reports on a project that sought to produce an engaging body of evidence by comparing how older Qatari nationals, expatriate professionals, and younger Qatari nationals spoke of their ongoing relationship with air-conditioning. In so doing, it reflects on different ways of defining the purpose of empirical research in human geography to highlight the continued value of being curious about the hitherto unknown subjectivities that await us in the field. In this case, this was despite the popularity of conceptually informed analysis in cultural studies of air-conditioning and the critical commentator position in relevant accounts of urban change in the region.