CUSAS Speaker Panel: Addressing Climate Change and Environmental Precarity in Anthropology

CUSAS is delighted to host an open panel discussion, featuring: Dr Barbara Bodenhorn, Dr Hildegard Diemberger, Dr Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp, and Dr Jonathan Woolley. They will discuss the ways anthropologists can study human experiences of the effects of climate change, while drawing on their own ethnographic research to examine how people frame and address climate-related questions in times of environmental unpredictability, vulnerability and urgency. Their talks will be followed by a 30-minute discussion, allowing time for questions and for broader conversation on the interests and challenges of engaging with such environmental questions within the discipline of anthropology, in academia and beyond.

Please find abstracts of their talks below:

‘It’s for survival’: on rules and breaking them in times of extreme events and unpredictability in the Alaskan Arctic (Barbara Bodenhorn)

Life in the Arctic is extreme and survival requires both flexibility and plasticity, especially in the context of rapid change. In this talk, I draw on recent work in environmental biology and climatology to examine some of the surprising adaptations developed by Arctic inhabitants – human and non-human. In a place where resources can be scarce, Inupiat value sharing above all else and that goes way beyond food. This in turn invites us to consider some counter intuitive ideas that underpin Inupiaq survival strategies in times of precarity.

Barbara Bodenhorn has worked in northern Alaska since 1980 and in Oaxaca since 2004. For the past several years she has been engaged with young people’s perceptions of the environment.

People of the cryosphere: A Cross-Regional, Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Icescapes in a Changing Climate (Hildegard Diemberger)

On the basis of ethnographic and historical research in the framework of the project "Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a Changing Climate", we explore the ways in which the study of Himalayan regions can be set in dialogue with that of the Circumpolar North and other icy places in the world. The mediation between local and scientific knowledges, cultural constructions of risk, and community action in contexts that are particularly vulnerable to climate change-related hazards emerge as features of the social life of the cryosphere – that area where by virtue of high altitude or high latitude, ice is a formative and formidable force in people’s lives. What emerges through this comparison is that ice is the focus of different epistemic, moral and affective frameworks within cosmopolitical ecologies shaped by human and non-human actors.

Hildegard Diemberger is the Research Director of Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. She is currently heading (together with Norway PI Hanna Havnevik and UK Co-I Bhaskar Vira) the interdisciplinary research project “Himalayan Connections: Melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a Changing Climate” (a cooperation between the University of Cambridge and Oslo University).

Common sense in uncommon times: Folk philosophies and climate change in East Anglia(Jonathan Woolley)

The Broads – a large wetland area in the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk – are on the front lines of the environmental crisis. Having already been subject to significant levels of eutrophication in the mid 20th century, these marshes and waterways are now acutely vulnerable to rising sea levels. Despite these risks, in the late 2010s, most of the local population were carrying on as normal, failing to notice the warning signs. Here, we utilise the concept of the metabolic rift to examine this rupture between the land and its people, tracing how English folk philosophy served to promote siloing, and turned resilience into blind spots.

Jonathan Woolley is a Principal Behavioural Analyst, at the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. Jonathan completed a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2018 exploring how cultural attitudes influence land management practices in British national parks and has conducted extensive research with druids and pagans in the UK to explore how their spiritual practices influence their attitudes towards folklore and the environment.

Riamsara Knapp:

I will talk about the work of the “Himalayan Connections" research project in Nepal and Bhutan, and the research we have conducted over the past five years in collaboration with local partners. In particular, I will focus on ‘climate change perceptions’ as a research thematic, as well as some pitfalls and quandaries encountered along the way. These are likely to include linguistic conundrums, such as how to ask about climate change (the concept), understanding different causalities, and confronting positionality challenges inherent in climate change research in ‘remote' places.

Riamsara Knapp completed her doctoral dissertation on Bhutanese Buddhist environmentalism in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge. She has taught political ecology in Bhutan and been Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge (Department of Social Anthropology) and Researcher at the University of Oslo (Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages) on the “Himalayan Connections: Melting Glaciers, Sacred Landscapes and Mobile Technologies in a Changing Climate” project (Research Council of Norway, 2018-2023). She has authored works on endogamous approaches to nature conservation and pandemic response in Bhutan, co-edited the volume Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia (Routledge 2022), and is currently co-editing another volume on climate change perceptions and responses in ‘remote’ cryospheric communities. Her interests encompass environmental conservation, climate change, culture and development in the Himalayas and beyond.

For more information, contact cusas@socanth.cam.ac.uk