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Cosmopolitan Temporalities: A Sociological Analysis on Climate Imageries in Brazil and China

Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences volume 11, pages 49–68 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Time is a central theoretical resource for climate change science, climate policies, social actions addressing climate change problems, and shaping concepts of uncertainty and ambiguity. This paper presents a debate on how different epistemic climate science communities deal with the concept of time by considering the social construction of climate imageries. To do so, we undertake two case studies on how China and Brazil’s climate communities have shaped situated knowledge based on different historical social experiences that created different modes of dealing with climate change: China has created a concept of time based on practical climate experiences, while Brazil has developed a futuristic sense of how the climate will behave in the future. Finally, we address the idea of cosmopolitan climate imageries originated from hybrid forums and constructed by stocks of knowledge which have been shared transhistorically by different epistemic communities towards a common climate governance.

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Notes

  1. See Bolin (2007) and Assad and Magalhaes (2013) for more details.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of Espírito Santo, Av. Fernando Ferrari, 514, Goiabeiras, Vitória-ES, 29075-910, Brazil

    Marcelo Fetz

  2. University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Estevão Bosco

  3. State University of Campinas/UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil

    Emerson Palmieri

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  1. Marcelo Fetz
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  2. Estevão Bosco
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  3. Emerson Palmieri
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Correspondence to Marcelo Fetz.

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Fetz, M., Bosco, E. & Palmieri, E. Cosmopolitan Temporalities: A Sociological Analysis on Climate Imageries in Brazil and China. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 11, 49–68 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-017-0180-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-017-0180-0

Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Time
  • Social imageries
  • China
  • Brazil