Violent atmospheres: Political ecologies of livelihoods and crises in Southeast Asia

Violent atmospheres are volatile mixes of socio-political and economic processes as well as biophysical ruptures that encompass surficial and gaseous matter across scales. Frequently driven by political-economic crisis, violent atmospheres are increasingly anthropogenically constructed and affectively experienced. While scholars have examined how the exploitation of resources in intensifying capitalist political economies produce violent terrestrial environments, very few have addressed the volumetric characteristics through which atmospheres-as both meteorological and affective entities-become violent. Integrating emerging work on resource political ecologies with the volumetric turn in the social sciences, we conceptually develop the notion of Violent Atmospheres to account for the recursive relationship between the internal contradictions of capital accumulation and atmospheric violence. In doing so, papers in this issue reveal how violent atmospheres, in their material and symbolic form, are volumetrically constituted and frequently attributed to the precarious livelihoods of the rural and urban poor. Through seven ethnographically grounded articles, the issue contributes to emerging scholarship within the volumetric turn by offering a political ecology of atmospheres in Southeast Asia.

Automated summary

This article examines the formation mechanism of violent atmospheres and their impact on society, emphasizing the driving role of political-economic crises in shaping violent atmospheres. By integrating research in resource political ecologies and the volumetric turn in social sciences, the concept of "Violent Atmospheres" is introduced to reveal the relationship between capitalist accumulation and atmospheric violence.