Vaping like a chimney; skeuomorphic assemblages and post-smoking geographies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the emergence of vaping (using e-cigarettes) as a nascent practice that is set to distinguish itself from smoking, yet one which is at the same time constrained by the same socio-cultural geographies of exclusion. Geographers have of late showed an interest in smoking but vaping has received little attention, and even beyond Geography, the burgeoning scholarship on the e-cigarette remains mostly within pharmacology and public health studies. This paper addresses these absences. The paper proposes an understanding of vaping as a skeuomorphic assemblage, which can help account for some of the discursive indeterminacy that stems from a design that, to a greater or lesser extent, mimics a practice that has been deemed a health, economic and moral hazard. Further, the example of vaping explored through the notion of skeuomorphism reveals that assemblages, and the bodies and technologies that constitute them are always social, political but above all historical. By drawing on an ethnographic study of vaping conducted in the UK, the paper examines how skeuomorphic assemblages gather between technology, body and the everyday physical and social environment. Bringing personal experience as a smoker to bear, it also considers the spatio-temporal, sensorial and embodied differences between smoking and vaping geographies.