The Anthropology of Climate Change: An Historical Reader

Climate change is a topic of intense interest but the current conversation rarely moves beyond an examination of the contemporary situation. In doing so, it ignores insights from millennia of scholarly attention to the relationship between climate and society and doesn’t take full advantage of anthropological work on the subject. This timely anthology brings together the most important classical works and contemporary scholarship for a complete historical anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change. The essays in this volume study the historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climate change; the impact and response to climate change at the local level; the impact on global debates about climate change from North–South post–colonial histories; and the social dimensions of the science of climate change .  They include coverage of environmental determinism, climatic events as social catalysts, climatic disasters and societal collapse, and ethno–meteorology.  An ideal text for courses in climate change, human/cultural ecology, environmental anthropology and archaeology, disaster studies, science and technology studies, history of science, and environmental sciences, this book not only informs current debates but also demonstrates that links between climate and society have preoccupied the human mind for as long as records have been kept.

Original Sources Preface Acknowledgments I. INTRODUCTION Introduction: The Anthropology of Climate Change: Six Millennia of Study of the Relationship between Climate and Society Michael R. Dove II. CONTINUITIES ‘Climate Theory’ 1. Airs Waters Places Hippocrates 2. Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate Charles de Secondat Montesquieu Beyond the Greco–Roman Tradition 3. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History Ibn Khaldûn 4. The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: an Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine Francis Zimmermann Ethno–Meteorology 5. Concerning Weather Signs Theophrastus 6. Gruff Boreas, Deadly Calms: A Medical Perspective on Winds and the Victorians Vladimir Jankovic III. SOCIETAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE Environmental Determinism 7. The History of Mankind Friedrich Ratzel 8. Environment and Culture in the Amazon Basin: An Appraisal of the Theory of Environmental Determinism Betty J. Meggers Climate Change and Societal Collapse 9. Management for Extinction in Norse Greenland Thomas H. McGovern 10. What Drives Societal Collapse? Harvey Weiss and Raymond Bradley Climatic Events as Social Crucibles 11. Natural Disaster and Political Crisis in a Polynesian Society: An Exploration of Operational Research James Spillius 12. Drought as "Revelatory Crisis": An Exploration of Shifting Entitlements and Hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana Jacqueline Solway IV. VULNERABILITY AND CONTROL Culture and Control of Climate 13. Rain–Shrines of the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia Elizabeth Colson 14. El Niño, Early Peruvian Civilization, and Human Agency: Some Thoughts from the Lurin Valley Richard L. Burger Climatic Disasters and Social Marginalization 15. The Disaster and Its Doubles Nancy Scheper–Hughes 16. ‘Nature’, ‘Culture’ and Disasters: Floods and Gender in Bangladesh Rosalind Shaw V. KNOWLEDGE AND ITS CIRCULATION Emic Views of Climatic Perturbation/Disaster 17. Typhoons on Yap David M. Schneider 18. The Politics of Place: Inhabiting and Defending Glacier Hazard Zones in Peru′s Cordillera Blanca M. Carey Coproduction of Knowledge in Climatic and Social Histories 19. Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in the Saint Elias Mountains Julie Cruikshank 20. The Making and Unmaking of Rains and Reigns Todd Sanders ‘Friction’ in the Global Circulation of Climate Knowledge 21. Transnational Locals: Brazilian Experience of the Climate Regime Myanna Lahsen 22. Channeling Globality: The 1997–1998 El Niño Climate Event in Peru Kenneth Broad and Ben Orlove

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, Deputy Director of the Climate and Energy Institute, and Curator of Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Yale University.  His interests include the cultural and political aspects of natural hazards and disasters; political dimensions of resource degradation; indigenous environmental knowledge; and the study of developmental and environmental institutions, discourses, and movements. He is author of The Banana Tree at the Gate: The History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo (2011), co–editor of Complicating Conservation: Beyond the Sacred Forest (2011) and Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader (Blackwell, 2008), and editor of Southeast Asian Grasslands: Understanding a Folk Landscape (2008).