Die Verschränkung von Umwelt und Wohnwelt – Grüne <i>smart homes</i> aus der Perspektive der pluralen Sphärologie
Abstract. This paper links two strands of Peter Sloterdijk's sphere project – his theory of the environment and his theory of dwelling – and mobilizes them for an analysis of entanglements between spaces of the environment and the space of the home in contemporary sustainability policies and smart home experiments. First, we retrace how Sloterdijk's topology of the environment combines a historical phenomenological methodology with ecological thinking. In the next step, we discuss Sloterdijk's theory of dwelling, which is closely linked to his thinking of the environment and is central to his conception of a plural spherology, yet has so far largely been overlooked in the reception. Sloterdijk's emphasis on the importance of dwelling in the „world's inner space“ („Weltinnenraum“) under conditions of a no longer externalizable environment helps to theorize how humans dwell on this earth in the 21st century. In the third part of the paper, we bring together both themes – environment and dwelling – to analyze contemporary ecological and digital home experiments from the perspective of a plural spherology. By showing how recent digital experiments in „smart homes“ entangle spaces of dwelling with environmental concerns we build on Sloterdijk's analysis but also extend it with insights from STS and governmentality studies to better capture the power effects inherent to digitalized dwelling.