Abstract
Climate change is considered to be global in at least two respects: it firstly denotes social-ecological processes affecting the whole world and secondly refers to a scientific body of knowledge claiming universal validity. Climate change, however, is not directly perceptible; knowledge about its causes and effects has to be mediated and can only become socially relevant at particular local sites if it connects to general life experiences and culture-specific patterns of interpreting the environment. Against this background, one might question the supposed global distribution and acceptance of climate change knowledge beyond academia. Drawing upon current experiences of the junior research group Climate Worlds, this chapter queries the prospects of climate change for becoming a globally shared issue of concern, paying particular attention to the role of social and cultural sciences in climate change research. It argues against an equation of physical and social facts of climate change and the disciplinary self-limitation to the study of mitigation and adaption strategies. In this regard, the parallels between the current shape of climate change-related social and cultural studies and the research tradition within the modernisation paradigm will be highlighted. The last part of the chapter finally explores the potentials of ethnography for developing a non-nostrifying approach to comparing distinct “climate cultures.” In respect thereof the notions of culture and belonging will be refined from a cross-linked ethnographic perspective.
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Notes
- 1.
Climate Worlds is an initiative of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (Essen) and the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology. It has been financially supported by the German Research Foundation. I owe a great personal debt of gratitude to these institutions and the projects’ directors Claus Leggewie and Jörg Bergmann for trusting me with the possibility of such inspiring collaborative work. My gratitude also goes to Tink Diaz for her wonderful documentary work and her overall support to the project’s progress; to the good soul of the project Johanna Gesing, to the project fellows Jelena Adeli, Claudia Grill, Robert Lindner, Julia Schleisiek and Lea Schmitt, whose detailed observations and intelligent thoughts are the centrepiece of this chapter, and to Julia Tischler for an extremely pleasant teamwork as well as for helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter.
- 2.
Many astronauts report about a radical change of perspective on the Earth and humans’ place on it due to the experience of having seen the planet in space with their own eyes (see Planetary Collective 2012).
- 3.
Many thanks to Jelena Adeli for providing me with her field observations from Cape Verde, upon which the following notions are based.
- 4.
The so-called “Thomas theorem” was first formulated by W.I. Thomas and D.S. Thomas in 1928 in the realm of childs’ behaviour studies. The authors point out that “the subject’s view of the situation, how he regards it, may be the most important element for interpretation. For his immediate behaviour is closely related to his definition of the situation, which may be in terms of objective reality or in terms of a subjective appreciation—‘as if’ it were so. […] If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (see p. 572 in Thomas and Thomas 1928).
- 5.
I entirely agree with Kirsten Hastrup (Chap. 8, in this volume) that “native” is a highly problematic notion, because it adheres to the imagination of culture in terms of territorial bounded and homogeneous units, which are treated as being rather immutable, that is to say fixed in time and space (Abu-Lughod 1991). I suggest the ethnomethodological reading of the term “member” and its underlying notion of culture to be a more suitable tool for approaching the subjects in contemporary ethnographies. Put in Paul Ten Have’s words: “The notion of ‘member’ refers to capacities or competencies that people have as members of society; capacities to speak, to know, to understand, to act in ways that are sensible in that society and in the situations in which they find themselves” (see p. 17 in Ten Have 2002). This fits very well with ethnography’s interest in studying culture as an assemblage of practices, signs, things and values, and help to question clear-cut boundaries between we and others, including the ethnographer.
- 6.
Since August 2012, all fellows are back from fieldwork and have been writing their individual PhD-thesis, apart from one (the San Francisco-study) who abandoned the project at an early stage due to a lack of funds.
- 7.
The Climate Worlds methodology includes methods for analysing the process of becoming a member. This ethnomethodological principle is discussed and exemplified in Greschke (2012).
- 8.
The film is accessible online at: www.uni-giessen.de/fbz/faculties/zmi/projects/climate-change
- 9.
Due to offshore gas production near the island, the grounds in some parts of Ameland sink faster, which is appreciated by scientists to be treated as a natural simulation of the rising sea level.
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Greschke, H. (2015). The Social Facts of Climate Change: An Ethnographic Approach. In: Greschke, H., Tischler, J. (eds) Grounding Global Climate Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9322-3_7
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