Joshua Dao-Wei Sim
Joshua Dao-Wei Sim is a Senior Research Fellow at the Human Potential Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. He is a historian of China-Southeast Asia interactions, with a particular focus on heat health and religion. Some of his publications have appeared in Social Science and Medicine, Military Medicine, and Healthcare. Before becoming a historian, Joshua worked as an exercise scientist in the Singapore Armed Forces. Currently, he is also working on a project which profiles the heat experiences and practices of Singapore households through physiology, rapid ethnography, and oral histories.
Human Potential Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
Session
World histories of cooling often highlight the emergence of air-conditioning as a dominant thermal technology, depicting an inexorable “progressive march” towards universal adoption that neglects the continued importance of electric fans in modern heat management. Singapore provides a critical intervention into these histories. Contrary to the “air-conditioned nation” discourse that equates Singapore’s modernisation with high AC reliance, I observe that a dominant fan-mediated culture gradually popularised in the island-nation since 1965. Drawing on 117 interviews from 39 households, I demonstrate that electric fans enabled Singaporeans to maintain time-honoured tropical heat-management practices despite the rise of residential AC from the 1980s.
Two arguments support this interpretation. First, the fan served as a foundational technological bridge during Singapore’s transition from rural kampungs to high-rise housing (1960s–1990s). This shift reflects the global phenomenon of rapid urbanisation where fans sustained time-honoured heat management practices—such as light dressing and consuming “cooling” foods—challenging the narrative of AC domination. Second, the Singapore case reveals a neglected “fan-based” world history through transnational stories of migrants from India, China, and Indonesia who settled in Singapore. These narratives highlight shared historical practices of electric fan usage with local-born Singaporeans, such as the use of metallic-blade fans and strategic angling to avoid direct fan-based ventilation on the body. These culturally-embedded practices illustrate the formation of an Asian transnational culture of fan usage distinct from Euro-American cooling approaches. Ultimately, centring the electric fan in world history enables identification of culturally-relevant sustainable practices, offering fresh insights for climate change mitigation.