This paper analyzes possible future scenarios around extreme heat and supply chain problems by drawing together anthropological texts and works of speculative fiction, as well as original research conducted in Jodhpur, India. On the theory side, environmental precarity, class-based commodity flows, and various types of foraging come from Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom At the End of the World (2016) while Eric Klinenberg’s Heat Wave: Anatomy of a Disaster (2003) will provide concrete examples of how social inequality manifested as risk during the 1995 Chicago heat wave. To visualize what future scenarios might look like, the paper also examines parts of two speculative fiction novels: the first half of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), and the opening chapter from Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020). Finally, the paper will incorporate my own observations from interviews conducted in Jodhpur in 2019, about what supply problems modern Rajasthanis encounter in connection with heat, and the measures they take to overcome them. Under heat waves and other climate-related stresses, electricity, water, and fresh food all have the possibility to become scarce, thus further impacting locals’ ability to deal with heat. Along with physical infrastructure strategies such as generators and water tanks, I assert that social connections within a community are a crucial way to withstand these vicious cycles.
