Emplaced care and atmospheric politics in unbreathable worlds

This paper contributes to emerging theories of unbreathable space by showing how breathers with asthma engage environments and atmospheres as the substrate of their everyday lives. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than 80 asthma sufferers living in the United States, I show how nonpharmaceutical care practices are used to breathe in place. First, I argue that attunement operates as a labor of care that engages with and creates the substrate of everyday life. Next, I describe a range of emplacement tactics that breathers use to navigate atmospheres and environments that are potentially risky, or that immediately produce asthma symptoms. Emplaced care involves situating oneself in ways that protect the breathing body within the sociomaterial spaces of everyday life. Finally, people with asthma are orientated differently than other breathers who may share the same atmosphere, but are not pathologically sensitized to it. These narratives of asthma care lend insight into emergent atmospheric politics by showing how differently attuned breathers care through environments by isolating, distancing, and barricading themselves from the world and others.