Heating ecologies: Resituating stocking and maintenance in domestic heating

Abstract

This article focuses on describing the different domestic and non-domestic practices and infrastructures through which heating is organized in domestic settings. Based on recent scholarly work interested in researching the interlinks between domestic heating use and non-domestic energy practices and infrastructures, it proposes to understand domestic heating as the practical outcome of existing heating ecologies, which are defined as the dynamic interrelations of in-home and out-home heating infrastructures and practices. The argument empirically unfolds using material from six months of ethnographic fieldwork that focused on a heater replacement policy program in central and southern Chile. Using the data we collected from participant observation and follow-up interviews, we describe the installation phase and establishment of new less polluting heaters, as well as how the installation of those new heaters problematizes and redefines preexisting heating ecologies that constitute domestic and non-domestic practices and infrastructures linked to firewood heating. We focus on two specific aspects of this change which proved to be particularly relevant in terms of the adoption of the new heaters: first, the change in the infrastructures and practices of fuel provision and, second, the change in the infrastructures and practices of maintenance and repair. The article ends by suggesting that further understanding of heating ecologies — their dynamics and changes — could be a critical element for explaining the success or failure of low carbon domestic technological transitions and policy intervention.