Ebook: Homely Atmospheres and Lighting Technologies in Denmark: Living with Light

Using case studies, such as the use of candlelight and energy saving lightbulbs in Denmark, this book unravels light’s place at the heart of social life. In contrast to common perception of light as a technical and aesthetic phenomenon, Mikkel Bille argues that there is a cultural and social logic to lighting practices. By empirically investigating the social role of lighting in people's everyday lives, Mikkel Bille reveals how and why people visually shape their homes.
Moving beyond the impact of its use, Bille also comments on the politics of lighting to examine how ideas of pollution and home act as barriers for technological fixes to curb energy demand. Attitudes to these issues are reflective of how human perceptions and practices are central to the efforts to cope with climate change.
This ethnographic study is a must-read for students of anthropology, cultural studies, human geography, sociology and design.
Homely Atmospheres and Energy Saving Technologies – Living with light investigates the role of lighting in people’s everyday life. In a context of political pressure to lower energy consumption, the book examines how people have adopted or resisted energy saving light bulbs as component in defining homeliness, social identity, and morality of energy consumption. Through a case study of the introduction of the energy saving light bulb in Denmark it addresses the broader question of ‘what is good lighting?’ from an anthropological perspective. The book argues that rather than merely making the world visible, light and lighting has an atmospheric potential that shapes subjectivity, communities, politics and national sentiments. Light is part of a continuous practice of attuning atmospheres.
The overall argument is that research on lighting has been dominated by technical, biological or aesthetic concerns, that, while fruitful to our understanding of light, also ignores the social life it helps forge. With a social approach to lighting, the book shows how homely atmospheres are shaped in the age of energy saving light bulbs. This takes the reader around seeing how light and atmospheres are conceptualised in cultural ways, how lighting is part of everyday practices and routines, the communities it sustains, the meanings it has, the knowledge it takes to use, and the politics it is entangled in.