This timely anthology brings together for the first time the most important ancient, medieval, Enlightenment, and modern scholarship for a complete anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change.
- Brings together for the first time the most important classical works and contemporary scholarship for a complete historical anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change
- Covers the historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climate change, including the impact and response to climate change at the local level
- Discusses the impact on global debates about climate change from North-South post-colonial histories and the social dimensions of the science of climate change.
- Includes coverage of topics such as 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, environmental sciences, science and technology studies, history of science, and conservation and development studies
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments to Sources viii
About the Editor x
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction: The Anthropology of Climate Change
Six Millennia of Study of the Relationship between Climate and Society 1
Michael R. Dove
Part I Continuities 37
Climate Theory
1 Airs, Waters, Places 41
Hippocrates
2 On the Laws in Their Relation to the Nature of the Climate 47
Charles de Secondat Montesquieu
Beyond the Greco-Roman Tradition
3 The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History 55
Ibn Khaldûn
4 The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine 67
Francis Zimmermann
Ethno-climatology
5 Concerning Weather Signs 83
Theophrastus
6 Gruff Boreas, Deadly Calms: A Medical Perspective on Winds and the Victorians 87
Vladimir Jankoviæ
Part II Societal and Environmental Change 103
Environmental Determinism
7 Nature, Rise, and Spread of Civilization 107
Friedrich Ratzel
8 Environment and Culture in the Amazon Basin: An Appraisal of the Theory of Environmental Determinism 115
Betty J. Meggers
Climate Change and Societal Collapse
9 Management for Extinction in Norse Greenland 131
Thomas H. McGovern
10 What Drives Societal Collapse? 151
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 157
James Spillius
12 Drought as a “Revelatory Crisis”: An Exploration of Shifting Entitlements and Hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana 168
Jacqueline S. Solway
Part III Vulnerability and Control 187
Culture and Control of Climate
13 Rain-Shrines of the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia 191
Elizabeth Colson
14 El Niño, Early Peruvian Civilization, and Human Agency: Some Thoughts from the Lurin Valley 201
Richard L. Burger
Climatic Disasters and Social Marginalization
15 Katrina: The Disaster and its Doubles 217
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
16 “Nature”, “Culture” and Disasters: Floods and Gender in Bangladesh 223
Rosalind Shaw
Part IV Knowledge and its Circulation 235
Emic Views of Climatic Perturbation/Disaster
17 Typhoons on Yap 239
David M. Schneider
18 The Politics of Place: Inhabiting and Defending Glacier Hazard Zones in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca 247
Mark Carey
Co-production of Knowledge in Climatic and Social Histories
19 Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in the Saint Elias Mountains 261
Julie Cruikshank
20 The Making and Unmaking of Rains and Reigns 276
Todd Sanders
“Friction” in the Global Circulation of Climate Knowledge
21 Transnational Locals: Brazilian Experiences of the Climate Regime 301
Myanna Lahsen
22 Channeling Globality: The 1997–98 El Niño Climate Event in Peru 315
Kenneth Broad and Ben Orlove
Index 335
