1st Edition
Geographies of Comfort
Bringing together conceptual and empirical research from leading thinkers, this book critically examines ‘comfort’ in everyday life in an era of continually occurring social, political and environmental changes.
Comfort and discomfort have assumed a central position in a range of works examining the relations between place and emotion, the senses, affect and materiality. This book argues that the emergence of this theme reflects how questions of comfort intersect humanistic, cultural-political and materialist registers of understanding the world. It highlights how geographies of comfort becomes a timely concern for Human Geography after its cultural, emotional and affective aspects. More specifically, comfort has become a vital theme for work on mobilities, home, environment and environmentalism, sociability in public space and the body. ‘Comfort’ is recognized as more than just a sensory experience through which we understand the world; its presence, absence and pursuit actively make and un-make the world. In light of this recognition, this book engages deeply with ‘comfort’ as both an analytic approach and an object of analysis.
This book offers international and interdisciplinary perspectives that deploys the lens of comfort to make sense of the textures of everyday life in a variety of geographical contexts. It will appeal to those working in human geography, anthropology, feminist theory, cultural studies and sociology.
1. Towards Geographies of Comfort
Laura Price, Danny McNally and Philip Crang
Part 1: Bodies and Environments
2. Transitioning Comforts: Organising Bodies for Urban Commuting Mobilities
David Bissell
3. Beyond the ‘Comfort Zone’: Experiencing and Responding to Everyday Weather
Eliza De Vet
4. (Re)Creating a Sense of Comfort: Post-Disaster Homemaking
Stephanie Harel
5. ‘Goodnight, Sleep Tight’: Bedtime Stories, Picture-Book Bedrooms and Tales of Comfort
Jamie Adcock
Part 2: Difference and Encounter
6. The Geopolitics of (Dis)Comfort and Indifference in Israel-Palestine
Daniel Webb
7. Homely Comforts Abroad: Navigating the Comfort Zone(s) Within International Student Mobility
Laura Prazeres
8. "Economia da Saudade": Comfort Food for London’s Brazilian Diaspora
Maria das Graças S. L. Brightwell
9. Assembling a Great Way to Fly: Performances of Comfort in the Air
Weiqiang Lin
Part 3: Materiality and Texture
10. Comfort, Identity and Fashion in the Post-Socialist City
Mark Jayne
11. Cosy, Comforting, Disruptive? Knitting and Knitters In/Out of Place
Laura Price
12. A Correspondence with Water: On the (Dis)Comforts of the Swimming Pool
Miranda Ward
Part 4: Health and Wellbeing
13. Picturing Dis/Comforting Geographies: Place, Punctum and Photography
Andrew Gorman-Murray
14. Between Bodies and Buildings: The Place of Comfort within Therapeutic Spaces
Daryl Martin
15. Feeling Good, Looking Good: Comfort and the Technologies of Beauty in the Spa
Jo Little and Katherine Morton
Biography
Danny McNally is Lecturer in Geography at Teesside University. His research draws from cultural and social geography, and art theory and practice to explore pressing social and environmental issues. He has a PhD in Cultural Geography from Royal Holloway, University of London.
Laura Price is Research and Project Manager at PositiveNegatives based in SOAS, University of London. She is also co-editor of Geographies of Making, Craft and Creativity published by Routledge in 2018. Her research explores feminist geography, education, craft and creativity.
Philip Crang is Professor of Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway University of London. He was editor of the journal Cultural Geographies from 1999 to 2008. His research is concerned with the material textures of places and the mobilities of people, things and ideas that constitute them.