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.

Table of Contents:
1 Towards geographies of comfort 1 LAURA PRICE, DANNY McNALLY, AND PHILIP CRANG SECTION ONE Bodies and environments 23 2 Transitioning comforts: bodily evaluations of urban mobilities 25 DAVID BISSELL 3 Beyond the ‘comfort zone’: experiencing and responding to everyday weather 43 ELIZA DE VET 4 (Re)creating a sense of comfort: post-disaster homemaking 65 STEPHANIE HAREL 5 ‘Goodnight, sleep tight’: bedtime stories, picture-book bedrooms and tales of comfort 82 JAMIE ADCOCK Contents vi Contents SECTION TWO Difference and encounter 99 6 The geopolitics of (dis)comfort and indifference in Israel-Palestine 101 DANIEL WEBB 7 Homely comforts abroad: navigating the comfort zone(s) within international student mobility 121 LAURA PRAZERES 8 ‘Economia da Saudade’: comfort food for London’s Brazilian diaspora 137 MARIA DAS GRACAS BRIGHTWELL 9 Assembling a great way to fly: performances of comfort in the air 151 WEIQIANG LIN SECTION THREE Materiality and texture 171 10 Comfort, identity and fashion in the post-socialist city 173 MARK JAYNE 11 Cosy, comforting, disruptive? knitting and knitters in/out of place 194 LAURA PRICE 12 A correspondence with water: on the (dis)comforts of the swimming pool 206 MIRANDA WARD SECTION FOUR Health and wellbeing 217 13 Picturing dis/comforting geographies: place, punctum and photography 219 ANDREW GORMAN-MURRAY 14 Between bodies and buildings: the place of comfort within therapeutic spaces 238 DARYL MARTIN 15 Feeling good, looking good: comfort and the technologies of beauty in the spa 258 JO LITTLE AND KATHERINE MORTON