Fridge Space: Journeys of the Domestic Refrigerator

FRIDGE SPACE: JOURNEYS OF THE DOMESTIC REFRIGERATOR by HELEN WATKINS A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) June 2008 © Helen Watkins, 2008 ABSTRACT My dissertation emerges from a curiosity about the mundane objects and machines with which we live and it pauses in Britain’s kitchens to ask what we might learn from looking in the fridge. Considered by many to be a rather ordinary and unremarkable appliance, the refrigerator forms a virtually ubiquitous backdrop to routine activities of feeding, provisioning and storing, but rarely is it brought into explicit focus. This study traces the ‘career’ of the mechanical refrigerator and is based upon interviews and archival work in Britain. I unravel intersecting histories and geographies of cooling, discuss a global trade in ice, explore changing understanding of the nature of heat and cold and show how varied ideas and technologies contributed to achieving the creation of artificial cold. The means by which these techniques were translated into the home is central to my discussion and I show how the domestication of refrigeration also played a role in the reconfiguration of associated practices, such as freezing, shopping and eating. I consider the process of normalisation through which refrigerators shifted category from novel products to essential appliances and argue that in many ways the refrigerator has now become integral to the constitution of domestic space. My research follows the lifecourse of the refrigerator and its journeys through multiple sites and spaces, enabling me to analyse diverse refrigerator knowledges and practices from repair shops and recycling facilities to scrap yards and museums, in addition to the home. Although using a refrigerator is frequently dismissed as something ‘self-evident’ or ‘obvious,’ I argue that fridge practices are not innate but learned. I explore ways in which these knowledges travel and pay particular attention to the translation of scientific and technical knowledges into domestic contexts. The ‘reach’ of the domestic refrigerator is considerable and I use one of the more notorious moments in its career, when refrigerators were implicated in global climate change, as a way to show how day to day activities like chilling milk and lettuce can have far-reaching effects at a range of scales. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents.......................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .............................................................................................................. vii List of Acronyms and Abbreviations ........................................................................... x Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: REFRIGERATORS, PRACTICES, KNOWLEDGES AND JOURNEYS..................................................... 1 The Week in the Window....................................................................... 1 Foregrounding the fridge..................................................................... 11 Key themes .................................................................................... 12 Round social theory with a fridge.................................................. 15 White box, black box..................................................................... 22 Fridge talk, texts and tea...................................................................... 25 A brief route map through the dissertation ....................................... 34 Chapter 2 CATCHING COLD: HISTORIES OF NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL COOLING.................................................................... 36 The Confectioners’ precarious commodity ........................................ 36 Harvesting and trading natural ice..................................................... 39 Bacon, chicken and snow .............................................................. 39 Unroofing the house of fishes........................................................ 40 A slippery speculation ................................................................... 42 The Ice King and the frozen water trade ....................................... 43 Importing cold............................................................................... 48 The theory and practice of mechanical refrigeration........................ 53 (Mis)understanding heat and cold ................................................. 56 Measuring temperature ........................................................ 57 Competing material and mechanical theories of heat.......... 59 Changing the state of matter................................................. 61 Heat engines, heat pumps and the Second Law of Thermodynamics................................................................... 62 First steps in artificial refrigeration ............................................... 64 Three routes to mechanical cooling............................................... 66 Industrial drivers of refrigeration....................................................... 70 Manufacturing artificial ice ........................................................... 70 The brewing industry..................................................................... 72 Moving meat.................................................................................. 74 iii Ice and rails .......................................................................... 75 Ocean-going vehicles of cold................................................ 79 Remapping Britain’s meat supplies...................................... 86 Cold reservoirs ..................................................................... 90 Grasping cold: physics in the museum and the kitchen.................... 92 Chapter 3 THE POWER OF COOLING............................................................. 98 Discovering a Lilliputian geography of germs ................................... 98 Ice use in the home.............................................................................. 106 Ice engineering............................................................................. 107 The domestic icebox: scaling down the ice house....................... 108 Electrifying the icebox........................................................................ 114 Mobilising electricity................................................................... 115 The development of mechanical refrigerators ............................. 118 Competing kinds of cooling................................................................ 125 ‘Mechanicals’ versus ice.............................................................. 125 Gas versus electricity................................................................... 129 Spreading the electrical message....................................................... 133 Building load, one appliance at a time......................................... 134 Gendering electricity................................................................... 136 The Electrical Association for Women........................................ 139 Housewives, bachelor girls and electrical exhibitions....... 142 Innovation in the All-Electric House .................................. 145 ‘Prefabs’ and postwar housing.......................................................... 147 Chapter 4 GETTING A REFRIGERATION EDUCATION ........................... 160 Fridge knowledges .............................................................................. 161 Domestic training......................................................................... 162 Learning by ‘osmosis’ ................................................................. 164 Just how common is ‘common knowledge’?............................... 165 Learning through observation and practice..................................... 167 Learning from refrigerator handbooks............................................ 172 Sinister facts and safe spaces....................................................... 173 Battling the invisible organisms of spoilage................................ 175 The care and feeding of the domestic refrigerator....................... 177 Cleaning.............................................................................. 177 Defrosting ........................................................................... 178 Mapping and ordering........................................................ 179 Cold Cookery............................................................................... 184 Chilled dainties and the physics of dessert......................... 185 Adventures in salad............................................................. 186 Learning to love leftovers ................................................... 187 Doubling the charm of your cocktails ................................ 187 Hidden work: baffled by a Princess............................................. 188 Becoming frozen-minded: freezing as a new practice..................... 193 A lack of refrigerator knowledge ...................................................... 198 iv Chapter 5 LIVING WITH A FRIDGE..............................................................

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