This work investigates the material culture of public temperatures in New York City. Numbers like temperature, while ubiquitous and indispensable to capitalized social relations, are often hidden away within urban infrastructures evading attention. It brings such numbers to light, interrogating how we construct them & how they construct us.

Scott W. Schwartz is an adjunct assistant professor at City College of New York and Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Their work examines the material culture of numbers and how quantification facilitates capitalized social relations.

List of Figures; List of Tables; Chapter 1: The Shape of Things to Come; Chapter 2: The Archaeology of the Immediate; Chapter 3: The History of Heat; Chapter 4: The Materiality of Temperature; Chapter 5: The Future of Numbers; References; Index.