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Life Indoors

How our homes are shaping our bodies and our planet

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Rachael Wakefield-Rann

    1. Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia

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  • Presents a novel qualitative research framework for investigating health and indoor ecologies

  • Develops practical insights to guide future, interdisciplinary research

  • Written in an accessible style that will have broad appeal

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introduction

    • Rachael Wakefield-Rann
    Pages 1-44

  3. Pathogens as Substances: Hygiene, Germs and Domestic Design

    • Rachael Wakefield-Rann
    Pages 45-75

  4. Inflammatory Urban Atmospheres: Biodiversity, Climate Control and the Materiality of Buildings

    • Rachael Wakefield-Rann
    Pages 77-121

  5. The Ecology Makes the Poison: Toxicant Exposure, Antimicrobial Logic and the Biology of History

    • Rachael Wakefield-Rann
    Pages 123-168

  6. A Relational Approach to Life Indoors

    • Rachael Wakefield-Rann
    Pages 169-211

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 213-216
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Keywords

About this book

In this timely and expansive book, Wakefield-Rann investigates how emerging disease ecologies are undermining definitions of health and immunity that have persisted since the 19th century, and had a formative influence over the design of not only homes, but entire cities. This wide-ranging account traces the links between the history of medicine, modernist design and architecture, the rise of inflammatory disease, the microbiomes of buildings and humans, antimicrobial resistance, and novel chemical pollutants, to show how indoor environments have made us as we have made them. In highlighting the processes that have been missed in designing perfectly controlled interior habitats, Life Indoors shows the limitations of dominant practices, classifications and philosophies to apprehend current indoor pathogen ecologies.

Reviews

​“Life Indoors reads together two major follies of industrial hubris and two major contributors to illness—antimicrobial resistance and toxic chemical exposures—as emerging from a common ontological problem. This generative critique that focuses on the increasingly standardized ecologies of the urban apartment building helps pave the way for radical shifts in the way humans relate to microbes, chemicals, and the environment writ large.” (Nicholas Shapiro, Assistant Professor of Biology and Society, UCLA)

“Written in an accessible and engaging style, Life Indoors does a fabulous job of bringing relational ideas about bodies, health and wellbeing into conversation with indoor ecologies. A thoughtful historical trajectory builds a strong foundation for the de-construction of the home as a ‘modern techno-capsule’, and to an exploration of the way human life is entwined with microbial ecosystems. This excellent book is full of fascinating insights and has much that will be of interest to a wide audience.” (Dr Benjamin Cooke, Senior Lecturer, Sustainability and Urban Planning Discipline & Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia

    Rachael Wakefield-Rann

About the author

Dr Rachael Wakefield-Rann is a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Life Indoors

  • Book Subtitle: How our homes are shaping our bodies and our planet

  • Authors: Rachael Wakefield-Rann

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-16-5175-5Published: 02 October 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-16-5178-6Published: 03 October 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-16-5176-2Published: 30 September 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 216

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Sociology, general, Medical Sociology, Human Geography, Public Health, Philosophy of Science

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