Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change

328 Pages·2015·2.37 MB·English

by  Jessica Barnes

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Climate Cultures
Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change
Edited by Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove
NEW HAVEN & LONDON
Cover image: Ice sculptures by the Brazilian artist Néle Azevedo in
Gendarmenmarkt public square in Berlin, September 2, 2009. REUTERS/Tobias
Schwarz.
Copyright © 2015 by Yale University.
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ISBN: 978-0- 300- 19881- 2 (paperback)
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction jessica barnes and michael r. dove 1
Part I. Historicizing Climate Change
1 Historic Decentering of the Modern Discourse of Climate Change:
The Long View from the Vedic Sages to Montesquieu michael r.
dove 25
2 How Long-S tanding Debates Have Shaped Recent Climate Change
Discourses ben orlove, heather lazrus, grete k. hovelsrud, and
alessandra giannini 48
3 From Conservation and Development to Climate Change:
Anthropological Engagements with REDD+ in Vietnam pamela
mcelwee 82
vi Contents
Part II. Knowing Climate Change
4 Glacial Dramas: Typos, Projections, and Peer Review in the
Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change jessica o’reilly 107
5 Scale and Agency: Climate Change and the Future of Egypt’s
Water jessica barnes 127
6 Satellite Imagery and Community Perceptions of Climate Change
Impacts and Landscape Change karina yager 146
7 Challenges in Integrating the Climate and Social Sciences for Studies
of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation frances c. moore,
justin s. mankin, and austin becker 169
Part III. Imagining Climate Change
8 Imagining Forest Futures and Climate Change: The Mexican State as
Insurance Broker and Storyteller andrew s. mathews 199
9 Digging Deeper into the Why: Cultural Dimensions of Climate
Change Skepticism Among Scientists myanna lahsen 221
10 The Uniqueness of the Everyday: Herders and Invasive Species in
India rajindra k. puri 249
11 Climate Shock and Awe: Can There Be an “Ethno- Science” of
Deep- Time Mande Palaeoclimate Memory? roderick j.
mcintosh 273
Afterword: The Many Uses of Climate Change mike hulme 289
List of Contributors 301
Index 307
Preface
Climate change has become one of the most pressing issues of our time.
Increasing air and ocean temperatures, altered precipitation and storm
patterns, and rising sea levels are affecting the globe, with profound social,
political, and economic consequences. Academia has responded to this chal-
lenge with a proliferation in the number of disciplines and scholars pursuing
research related to climate change. These scholars include many anthropolo-
gists who are thinking about the nexus of nature, culture, science, politics, and
belief that constitutes climate change. Yet although conceptually anthropology
has much to offer the field, there are few books that represent the range of
anthropological perspectives on climate change. The goal of this book is to fill
that gap, by integrating and articulating the contributions that anthropology
can bring to our understandings of and response to climate change.
In the introduction we identify the key ways in which we see anthropolog-
ical scholarship as adding to climate change debates. The main part of the
book is organized in three parts. The first historicizes climate change, drawing
important parallels between present- day discourse and practice and what has
gone before. The second explores how the body of knowledge about climate
change and its impacts is produced and interpreted by scientists, modelers,
vii
viii Preface
policymakers, and community members. The third highlights the role of the
imagination in shaping conceptions of climate change. Given its broad range
of case studies from diverse time periods and geographic areas, the book will
be of interest to scholars in anthropology, geography, sociology, environ-
mental history, political ecology, political science, environmental studies,
science and technology studies, and interdisciplinary programs on climate
change or, more broadly, society–environment relations. Climate change
often appears to be an intractable problem, and certainly some dimensions of
it may prove to be so. Yet anthropology offers new possibilities for unpacking
the complex relationships between society and climate, certainty and uncer-
tainty, science and knowledge, global and local that embody climate change.
To those who participate in and to those who simply observe the polarized
public debates about climate change, we offer nuanced and grounded ways of
thinking about this challenge.
Publication of this book was made possible by a number of institutions and
individuals. We thank the funders of a workshop that both energized and
helped to frame the development of this book: the Yale Climate and Energy
Institute, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Edward J. and
Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund at the MacMillan Center for
International and Area Studies at Yale, Yale Tropical Resources Institute, and
Yale Institute of Sacred Music. We thank our current institutions, the
University of South Carolina and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies, for their support. We thank Shereen D’Souza, who helped coordi-
nate the workshop, and Kelly Goldberg for her help with the preparation of
the manuscript. We thank Bill Nelson and Lynn Shirley for their assistance
in preparing the figures for the text and Alexander Trotter for writing the
index. At Yale University Press, we especially thank Jean Thomson Black for
her backing of this project from the outset, including attending our work-
shop, Margaret Otzel and Samantha Ostrowski.
Introduction
Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove
A recent summer edition of the New Yorker magazine adopted an
unseasonal topic for its front cover: Santa Claus (fig. 0.1).1 In the
illustration, Santa, his cheeks flushed, is slumped on the ground
against a striped pole, under the yellow orb of a bright sun. His
expression is one of dismay, surprise, or perhaps exhaustion. His
fairy- tale frozen homeland has been reduced to a small iceberg in a
sea of blue. There is little room for the elves to work or the reindeer
to eat here. Santa is marooned.
The magazine cover conveys a powerful message of environ-
mental changes that are happening today. The centrally placed sun
evokes a warmer, climate-c hanged world. The isolated iceberg
captures a landscape fundamentally altered by that sun. The figure
of Santa Claus strikes a note of familiarity, yet his slouched stance
and sad expression suggest that something is amiss. At the same
time, the presence of this legendary figure in Western folklore
alludes to ongoing questions being asked by many members of the
North American public about whether these environmental changes
are in fact real or, like Santa, just a myth. Despite an assembled
1