Geographies of Thermopolitical Sacrifice
Abstract
Human geography scholarship understands extreme heat as socially produced and politically mediated. However, dominant notions of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation fail to capture heat-related harm as predictable and institutionally tolerated. This paper conceptualizes geographies of thermopolitical sacrifice to foreground how extreme heat is governed through differential exposure and thresholds of acceptable loss. Extending debates on abandonment, thermal violence, and climate necropolitics, it shifts the analysis from descriptive vulnerability toward the political allocation of harm. It offers a new lexicon and methodologies for sensing sacrifice and weathering and concludes with hopeful thermopolitics as a justice-oriented praxis of redistribution, repair, and care.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Geographies of human-animal interactions
Climate Change and Health Impacts
Climate Change
Adaptation
Migration
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Progress in Environmental Geography
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 203–225
- Publication date
- 27 May 2026
- Language
- EN