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Abstract
One of climate change's most certain impacts is increasingly frequent and extreme heat. Heat management and climate adaptation policies generally utilize temperature and humidity thresholds to identify what constitute "extreme" conditions. In the workplace, such thresholds can be used to trigger reductions in work intensity and/or duration. In regions that routinely exceed proposed thresholds, however, this approach can be deeply problematic and raises critical questions about how frequently exposed populations already manage and mitigate the effects of extreme heat. Drawing on social practice theories, this paper repositions everyday engagements with extreme heat in terms of practices of work. It finds that bodies absorb and produce heat through practices, challenging the view that extreme heat is an "external" risk to which bodies are "exposed". This theoretical starting point also challenges the utility of threshold-based adaptation strategies by demonstrating how heat is actively coproduced by living, performing bodies in weather. This argument is exemplified through a case study of outdoor, manual workers in Australia's monsoon tropics, where work practices were adapted to reduce thermal load. More specifically, we find that workers "weather" work and "work" the weather to enable work to be done in extreme conditions. Our analysis of everyday heat adaptation draws attention to the generative capacities of bodies and unsettles two established separations: 1) that between climatic exposure and sensitivity, calling for a more embodied, experiential, and performed perspective and 2) that between climatic impacts and (mal)adaptation, calling for an understanding of climate adaptation, as located in everyday practices, in the management of bodies in weather.

Northern Australia has a population of 1.2 million people across nearly half the continental landmass. It is home to many diverse communities of people, including Aboriginal nations, descendants of European, Melanesian and Asian settlers and more recent arrivals. It is an area of globally significant natural beauty with unique ecologies. It also has strategic and economic importance to Australia. A contentious debate over the future of the region can be observed within three themes: Big development, big conservation and policies seeking Indigenous wellbeing. We argue that if the agendas associated with each of these themes and their associated agents are driven forward in isolation, the tensions between the three will compromise the health, wellbeing and economic coherence and vitality of the North. This paper presents an overview of the present governance landscape with a critique of the role of neoliberalism and neoliberal governmentality. It identifies some of the ways in which 'other' social values and ways of knowing are either marginalised or rendered invisible in these narratives of governance and development. In highlighting the tensions that result from these exclusions, we argue there is a need to both understand these dynamics, and move towards an explicit commitment to open, genuine dialogue, inclusive of the communities that reside in northern Australia.