Towards a decolonial heat-health nexus: Disrupters, enablers and energy properties of heat from the 19th century to the present day

Joshua Dao-Wei Sim and Laurie Parsons

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 382, issue C

Abstract: Under climate change, heat stress is emerging as one of the world's most pressing medical and social problems. Yet the very urgency of the topic has perpetuated a simplistic, technocratic perspective on the deleterious effects of heat on human populations which remains intertwined with the logics of colonialism. Such views neglect everyday, traditional, embodied, and intersectional aspects of human heat practices which are often emphasised by grassroots communities as part of their heat mitigation experiences. Moreover, different medical and environmental traditions dictate various interpretations of hot-cold notions across cultures. From the perspective that our current understanding of heat-health exists in a particular, socially-defined moment, this paper recovers, reinterprets and decolonises these diverse views and experiences through an inter-disciplinary historiographical literature review that considers relevant historical, ethnographic, and historically-driven scientific scholarship on heat health covering the time period of 1800s to the present day. Through a critical evaluation of these studies, we propose three analytical categories that can be used to frame, organise and build a foundation for historical-ethnographic studies in heat health: heat as (a) a disrupter of health; (b) an enabler of health; and (c) as an energy property of health. These three categories represent a de-centring of the deleterious and technocratic views of heat-health and its associated colonial logics. Building on recent decolonial studies stressing the undoing of Eurocentric epistemologies and structures in postcolonial societies, our conclusion draws on the three categories to propose how we could work towards the decolonisation of the heat-health nexus.

Keywords: Heat-health; Climate change; Heatwaves; Heat-related illnesses; Acclimatisation; Colonialism; Decolonisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118357

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