Climate Change and Anthropology Seminar

Climate Change and Anthropology Seminar
January 19, 2012

Listen to the seminar here

The Climate Change and Anthropology seminar aimed to foster discussion on environmental change between students and staff, to highlight staff support for students thinking of engaging with environmental issues, and to discuss the range of projects that are eminently feasible within the scope of undergraduate or Masters research.

Speakers presented their own work and experiences of how they have gone about making such an unwieldy global issue as climate change into the kind of puzzle that anthropologists are equipped to deal with.

Convened by Jonas Tinius and Tristam Barrett.

Presentations:

Dr Hildegard Diemberger, A Personal History of Climate Histories.

Hildegard explained the development of the Climate Histories network and its future prospects. Since it was founded in May 2010, the network has connected researchers working with different kinds of knowledge about climate—local, anthropological and natural scientific.

She emphasised that anthropologists have been key to bringing these different knowledge systems into conversation with each other. Working with glaciologists and climate modellers has proved a fascinating avenue for anthropological research because it shows the possible complementarities and gaps between different approaches to climate.

Daniel McEvoy, Creating Guilt, Overcoming Denial

Daniel spoke about his experience canvassing for Greenpeace in New York. He emphasised the marketing strategies used by canvassers and how they sought to overcome refusals to donate. Key to the strategies of these modern-day pardoners was to provoke guilt and then present a donation to Greenpeace as a form of exoneration.

His presentation showed how campaigning organisations (and also “climate response action groups” such as Transitions or Carbon Conversations) could be an interesting and accessible line of inquiry for dissertation work.

Dr David Sneath, Vulnerability and Variability among Inner Asian pastoralists

David talked about the effects of changing climate and economy on Inner Asian pastoralists. Exposure to different kinds of risk (in the form of increasing climate variability, changing credit rates and uncertain markets) has increased the vulnerability of pastoralists’ livelihoods—with potentially catastrophic consequences.

David also offered a few thoughts on how anthropology can be used to critique different ways of thinking about the environment, and to investigate how people actually live in, use, and depend on their environments.

Dr Richard Irvine, The Climate of Comfort

Richard asked what it means to think of human beings as geological agents. His recent fieldwork in the Fens—the drained marshlands of East Anglia—brought him to see how engagement with the land has shaped the way people think about their past, present, and future impacts on the environment.

Considering humans as agents of geological change leads anthropologists to examine the role of notions as “comfort” for human behaviour. For instance, the climate impact of air-conditioned cars, homes and offices may be well known but, as Richard asked, why is it that large numbers of people feel they have to be cold in summer?