Framing China's tropics: Thermal techno‐politics of socialist tropical architecture in Africa (1960s−1980s)

Abstract

This paper seeks to position socialist China in the mobility of global socialism in the context of Cold‐War politics. It examines how the techno‐politics of China and the Soviet‐bloc's socialist tropical architecture differently reconfigured thermal exchanges between the environment, human body and a series of other multi‐scalar things in Africa during the 1960s−1980s. Drawing on the theories of thermal material culture, techno‐politics and science and technology studies (STS), it constructs a cross‐cultural comparison between China and Soviet‐bloc, aiming to achieve a more nuanced techno‐political understanding of mid‐late twentieth century socialist architecture in the Global South. It also hopes to contribute to recent scholarship about thermal comfort and governance in the context of climate change.

Editorial: Tropical Connections and Traumas

“…In turn, ‘tropical architecture’ connects with the journal's long‐standing concerns with actions, boundaries, discourses and visons of tropicality (Driver & Yeoh, 2000; Sidaway et al ., 2018). The prize‐winning paper, by NUS Department of Architecture doctoral student, Zhijian Sun (2023: 51):

examines how the techno‐politics of China and the Soviet‐bloc's socialist tropical architecture differently reconfigured thermal exchanges between the environment, human body and a series of other multi‐scalar things in Africa during the 1960s−1980s.

…”

“…Focused on the decades after the Sino‐Soviet split of 1961 yielded what Jeremy Friedman (2015) termed a Shadow Cold War , Sun's paper speaks also to contemporary debates about climate change, architectural design air‐conditioning and welfare (themes considered too in the paper by Rituraj Neog, 2024, in this issue). Hence Sun (2023: 534) concludes by asking:

how did the narrow understandings of thermal comfort become so globally dominant? How did their underlying techno‐politics and thermal material culture co‐constitute and transform each other?

…”