Convivial atmotechnics: Animating atmospheres of togetherness and indeterminacy in Kingston and Abidjan

This article draws on ethnographic work with tour guides in Kingston and local radio animateurs in Abidjan to document their “atmotechnics” – the practices through which they enliven urban atmospheres. Through cross-contextual juxtapositions, we delve into the relational intricacies and contextual variegation of atmotechnics. Crucially, we point to their complexity and significance in cities whose atmospheres are fractured by racialized socio-economic divides and practices of territorial control. We show that tour guides and radio hosts animate atmospheres of conviviality that are radically indeterminate: they evade and unsettle dominant models of “reconciliation” or “social cohesion,” inviting us instead to think/feel commonality within and despite fractures. In making this argument, we contribute to scholarship on urban atmospheres, which acknowledges their political nature without considering the street-level agencies that shape them; and we extend scholarship that theorizes conviviality as a non-normative mode of interrelation.