A cultural history of climate change PDF
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A Cultural History of Climate Change Charting innovative directions in the environmental humanities, this book examines the cultural history of climate change under three broad headings: history, writing and politics. Climate change compels us to rethink many of our traditional means of historical understanding, and demands new ways of relating human knowledge, action and representations to the dimensions of geological and evolutionary time. To address these challenges, this book positions our present moment of climatic knowledge within much longer histories of climatic experience. Only in light of these histories, it argues, can we properly understand what climate means today across an array of discursive domains, from politics, literature and law to activism and neighbourly conversation. Its chapters identify turning points and experiments in the construction of climates and of atmospheres of sensation. They examine how contemporary ecological thought has repoliticised the representation of nature and detail vital aspects of the history and prehistory of our climatic modernity. This groundbreaking text will be of great interest to researchers and postgradu- ate students in environmental history, environmental governance, history of ideas and science, literature and eco-criticism, political theory and cultural theory, as well as all general readers interested in climate change. Tom Bristow is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, University of Melbourne, Australia. Thomas H. Ford is a Lecturer in English at Monash University, Australia. Routledge Environmental Humanities Series editors: Iain McCalman and Libby Robin Editorial Board Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge, UK Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK Jodi Frawley, University of Sydney, Australia Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA Jennifer Newell, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, USA Paul Warde, University of East Anglia, UK Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia International Advisory Board William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK Sarah Buie, Clark University, USA Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing Rob Nixon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Australia Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre, LMU Munich University, Germany Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA Kirsten Wehner, Head Curator, People and the Environment, National Museum of Australia The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture. The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmental challenges has shifted the epicentre of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the human- focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences. We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change. Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities Jodi Frawley and Iain McCalman The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress An environmental history Cameron Muir The Biosphere and the Bioregion Essential writings of Peter Berg Cheryll Glotfelty and Eve Quesnel Sustainable Consumption and the Good Life Interdisciplinary perspectives Edited by Karen Lykke Syse and Martin Lee Mueller The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis Rethinking modernity in a new epoch Edited by Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil and François Gemenne Nature, Environment and Poetry Ecocriticism and the poetics of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes Susanna Lidström Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence Ecological wisdom at the intersection of religion, ecology, and philosophy Sam Mickey Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture Edited by Fernando Vidal and Nélia Dias A Cultural History of Climate Change Edited by Tom Bristow and Thomas H. Ford Ecopolitical Homelessness Defining place in an unsettled world Gerard Kuperus “As Gro Harlem Brundtland famously observed, “Current environmental problems require that we move beyond compartmentalization to draw the very best of our intellectual resources from every field of endeavor.” This valuable collection of essays from a globally diverse group of historians and cultural scholars expands those resources in valuable ways by revealing new dimensions of the discourses sur- rounding climate change and the Anthropocene.” —James Rodger Fleming, Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Colby College, Maine, USA “Understanding the way climate change is altering the world – imaginatively as much as materially – requires the serious engagement of humanities scholars who can bring with them great depths of insight about how and why humans reason and imagine. This volume is the first to bring together leading contemporary humani- ties scholarship about climate change into a single coherent setting. The chapters help us to think together about what changes in our climates mean. They show that the humanities are not simply a late-arriving appendage to Earth System science, to help merely in the work of translation. Their distinctive insights necessarily alter the ways in which the idea of climate change can be conceptualized and acted upon.” —Mike Hulme, King’s College London, UK A Cultural History of Climate Change Edited by Tom Bristow and Thomas H. Ford First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 selection and editorial matter, Tom Bristow and Thomas H. Ford; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bristow, Tom (Cultural historian), editor. | Ford, Thomas H. (Literary historian), editor. Title: A cultural history of climate change / edited by Tom Bristow and Thomas H. Ford. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, Earthscan, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015045018| ISBN 9781138838161 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315734590 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Climatic changes—Social aspects. | Climatic changes—History. | Human ecology—Cross-cultural studies. | Anthropology. Classification: LCC QC903 .C865 2016 | DDC 363.738/7409—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045018 ISBN: 978-1-138-83816-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73459-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by diacriTech, Chennai Contents List of figures ix List of contributors xi Acknowledgements xv Foreword xvii DIPESH CHAKRABARTY Climates of history, cultures of climate 1 TOM BRISTOW AND THOMAS H. FORD PART I Climates of history 15 1 Voices of endurance: climate and the power of oral history 17 DEB ANDERSON 2 Rethinking seasons: changing climate, changing time 38 CHRIS O’BRIEN 3 The terrestrial envelope: Joseph Fourier’s geological speculation 55 JEROME WHITINGTON 4 Melancholy and the continent of fire 72 TOM BRISTOW AND ANDREA WITCOMB 5 The Anthropocene and the long seventeenth century: 1550–1750 87 LINDA WILLIAMS viii Contents PART II Climates of writing 109 6 Change beyond belief: fictions of (the) Enlightenment and Simpson’s ‘climate change suite’ 111 JAYNE LEWIS -- 7 Fuels and humans, bíos and zoe 128 KAREN PINKUS 8 The ‘foreign grave’ motif in Victorian medicine and literature 138 ROSLYN JOLLY 9 Climate change and literary history 157 THOMAS H. FORD PART III Climates of politics 175 10 Climate change: politics, excess, sovereignty 177 NICK MANSFIELD 11 Para-religions of climate change: humanity, eco-nihilism, apocalypse 192 S. ROMI MUKHERJEE 12 Litigation, activism, and the paradox of lawfulness in an age of climate change 211 NICOLE ROGERS 13 This is not my beautiful biosphere 229 TIMOTHY MORTON Index 239 Figures 2.1 Gurruwilyun Yolnu seasons – Gäwa Gurruwilyun Seasons Poster 40 2.2 January Rainfall, Darwin, 1870–1942 47 2.3 April Rainfall, Darwin, 1869–1941 47 2.4 July Rainfall, Darwin, 1869–1941 48 2.5 October Rainfall, Darwin, 1869–1941 48 4.1 Water Zone, Forest Gallery 75 4.2 Visitors on Boardwalk, Forest Gallery 77 4.3 The Kinglake Chimney installation, Forest Gallery 83
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