W6C1: climate change

Question 1

Climate change, definition:

Answer 1

A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods

Physical and social phenomenon, and a recent phenomenon

Climate: average weather over thirty years
Change: alteration of a broader (climate) system (of which weather is one of the most important manifestations)

Question 2

Anthropocene:

Answer 2

The proposed name for ‘our time’, in which our impact on the world (geology, eco systems, climate change) is emphasized.

Our impact on the planet is hugely far reaching, and therefore a different stage in the history of the world.

Question 3

The sixth extinction (Kolbert):

Answer 3

biodiversity crisis is closely linked to climate change

Question 4

Climate change is sometimes called a wicked problem:

Answer 4

problems that are in themselves full of paradoxes and contradictions. A comprehensive solution is difficult, problem changes in front of you whilst you work on it.

You need to look at it from multiple perspectives

Crises are all interrelated: we need transdisciplinarity

Question 5

Transdiciplinarity:

Answer 5

(…) a complex problem originates from society before working with insights from different disciplines and practice to achieve integration. The integration of academic insights and insights from practice then serves a purpose to expediate the implementation of solutions for a complex problem from practice.

Starts with how the problem originates from society, before working with insights from different areas.

Question 6

Interdisciplinarity:

Answer 6

[integrating] perspectives or insights from different perspectives through interaction, in order to better understand a complex phenomenon. (…) (… beyond a simple sum of its parts). (…

Question 7

Whethering the storm

Answer 7

• Disaster studies as a field of interdisciplinary study
• Worked on coping with disaster in the philippines
• Disasters are always cultural, as much as they are economic and political
• Media frame: climate change, massive spectacle,
• Yolanda: local version, talked about national politics, incompetence of local authorities, identity, self worth
• We don’t have to use the term climate change to talk about climate change
  Actually asking how people interpret, understand extreme weather is your entry point

Question 8

Resilience:

Answer 8

Often used when talking about climate change, by outsiders

However: stating that a specific country or people is resilient puts a lot of the burden on the people themselves. Local perspectives change this

Question 9

Rendering technical (Tania Li)

Answer 9

• Often problems are framed in technical terms
• But often are political issues, about contestation, about political interests. Rendering them technical is taking the political out of political problems
• If you take control over defining the problem, you can exclude possible causes, and offer certain solutions

Question 10

The anti-politics machine:

Answer 10

a legitimizing power structure of language when governments and organisations use technical interventions to develop countries

Question 11

Multi-scalar anthropology:

Answer 11

being aware of what is happening on global and national levels and what is happening on local levels. Moving from the locality via government and corporations to supranational politics.

Has led to interest in the hyper local and the anthropology of expertise: how is expertise executed, how does it get authority, how is it constructed?

Question 12

The unique contribution of anthropology to climate science:

Answer 12

• Local knowledge and the connection between global and local
• Ethnographic insight: Anthropologists as interpreters, translators and experts on specific local life-worlds
• Historical perspective
• Holistic view

Question 13

‘View from below’, unique to anthropology helps:

Answer 13

• Awareness of variation is essential to all anthropological research: no reason to assume the same solutions work everywhere, and that the challenges are the same.
• Working with local people, not developing for them. Climate change policy should be scaled down, but this can also be a weakness: failure to see global connections. This makes interdisciplinarity necessary
• Comparison: main methods for generating knowledge and opening new theoretical horizons. For example: ‘land’ isn’t always personally owned