E-catalog        

Introduction: grounding global climate change -- Part I: Interdisciplinarity, climate research and the role of the social sciences -- Ecological novelty: towards an interdisciplinary understanding of ecological change in the Anthropocene -- Predicting the past? Integrating climate and culture during historical famines -- Anthropology in the Anthropocene: sustainable development, climate change and interdisciplinary research -- Part II: Searching for the social facts of global climate change: ethnographic perspectives -- Climate and mobility in the West African Sahel: conceptualising the local dimensions of the environment and migration nexus -- Animal belongings: human-non human interactions and climate change in the Canadian Subarctic -- Part III: Spinning global webs of local knowledges: collaborative and comparative ethnographies -- The social facts of climate change: an ethnographic approach -- Comparing climate worlds: theorising across ethnographic fields -- Towards imagining the big picture and the finer details: exploring global applications of a local and scientific knowledge exchange methodology -- Part IV: Concluding statement -- You ain’t seen nothing yet: a death-defying look at the future of the climate debate.

This book traces the evolution of climate change research, which, long dominated by the natural sciences, now sees greater involvement with disciplines studying the socio-cultural implications of global warming. While most of social climate change research focuses on how people deal with environmental stresses and possible ways of adaptation, this volume foregrounds the question: What are the theoretical and methodological challenges of investigating climate change in different disciplines? In their Introduction, the editors chart the changing role of the social and cultural sciences in climate change research, delineating different research strands that have emerged over the past few years. Part I of the book explores the prospects and challenges of interdisciplinarity in climate change research, connecting the points of view of a plant ecologist, a historian and a social anthropologist. Parts II and III provide ethnographic insights in a wide range of ‘climate cultures’ by exploring the social and cultural implications of global warming in particular contexts and communities, stretching from hunter communities in the High Arctic and the Canadian Subarctic over Dutch and Cape Verdian island communities and the metropolitan citizens of Tokyo to pastoralist families in the West African Sahel. Thereby, Parts II and III explore ethnography’s potential to produce locally-grounded knowledge about global phenomena, such as climate change. Uniting the different approaches, all authors engage critically with the research subject of climate change itself, reflecting on their own practices of knowledge production and epistemological presuppositions.