This timely anthology The Anthropology of Climate Change brings together for the first time the most important ancient, medieval, Enlightenment, and modern scholarship for a complete anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change.
- Brings together for the first time the most important classical works and contemporary scholarship for a complete historical anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change
- Covers the historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climate change, including the impact and response to climate change at the local level
- Discusses the impact on global debates about climate change from North-South post-colonial histories and the social dimensions of the science of climate change.
- Includes coverage of topics such as environmental determinism, climatic events as social catalysts, climatic disasters and societal collapse, and ethno-meteorology
The Anthropology of Climate Change is an ideal text for courses in climate change, human/cultural ecology, environmental anthropology and archaeology, disaster studies, environmental sciences, science and technology studies, history of science, and conservation and development studies.
Acknowledgments to Sources viii
About the Editor x
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction: The Anthropology of Climate Change
Six Millennia of Study of the Relationship between Climate and Society / Michael R. Dove 1
Part I Continuities 37
Climate Theory
1 Airs, Waters, Places / Hippocrates 41
2 On the Laws in Their Relation to the Nature of the Climate / Charles de Secondat Montesquieu 47
Beyond the Greco-Roman Tradition
3 The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History / Ibn Khaldûn 55
4 The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine / Francis Zimmermann 67
Ethno-climatology
5 Concerning Weather Signs / Theophrastus 83
6 Gruff Boreas, Deadly Calms: A Medical Perspective on Winds and the Victorians / Vladimir Jankoviæ 87
Part II Societal and Environmental Change 103
Environmental Determinism
7 Nature, Rise, and Spread of Civilization / Friedrich Ratzel 107
8 Environment and Culture in the Amazon Basin: An Appraisal of the Theory of Environmental Determinism / Betty J. Meggers 115
Climate Change and Societal Collapse
9 Management for Extinction in Norse Greenland / Thomas H. McGovern 131
10 What Drives Societal Collapse? / Harvey Weiss and Raymond Bradley 151
Climatic Events as Social Crucibles
11 Natural Disaster and Political Crisis in a Polynesian Society: An Exploration of Operational Research / James Spillius 157
12 Drought as a “Revelatory Crisis”: An Exploration of Shifting Entitlements and Hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana / Jacqueline S. Solway 168
Part III Vulnerability and Control 187
Culture and Control of Climate
13 Rain-Shrines of the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia / Elizabeth Colson 191
14 El Niño, Early Peruvian Civilization, and Human Agency: Some Thoughts from the Lurin Valley / Richard L. Burger 201
Climatic Disasters and Social Marginalization
15 Katrina: The Disaster and its Doubles / Nancy Scheper-Hughes 217
16 “Nature”, “Culture” and Disasters: Floods and Gender in Bangladesh / Rosalind Shaw 223
Part IV Knowledge and its Circulation 235
Emic Views of Climatic Perturbation/Disaster
17 Typhoons on Yap / David M. Schneider 239
18 The Politics of Place: Inhabiting and Defending Glacier Hazard Zones in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca / Mark Carey 247
Co-production of Knowledge in Climatic and Social Histories
19 Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in the Saint Elias Mountains / Julie Cruikshank 261
20 The Making and Unmaking of Rains and Reigns / Todd Sanders 276
“Friction” in the Global Circulation of Climate Knowledge
21 Transnational Locals: Brazilian Experiences of the Climate Regime / Myanna Lahsen 301
22 Channeling Globality: The 1997–98 El Niño Climate Event in Peru / Kenneth Broad and Ben Orlove 315
Index 335
Michael R. Dove is the Margaret K. Musser Professor of Social Ecology in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Director of the Tropical resources Institute, and Curator of Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Yale University.