ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the central concepts ‘climate cultures’ and ‘space’. It shows that the concept of culture in social-science climate research has recurred in diverse semantic guises, ranging from Herder’s holistic orientation to the knowledge-based conception. Social-science climate-change-related research can be seen to have begun as an offshoot of the natural sciences. The developed fund of German anthropological research provides a further exception to the repertoire of essentialist studies in social-science climate research. In summary, the concept of culture in current German ethnographically influenced studies encompasses various forms of knowledge and interpretive patterns for climate change in life world contexts. The general problem of culture-comparative research also appears in social-science climate research: ‘There is hardly another term in the social sciences that has been used so frequently, so inconsistently, and so vaguely as that of culture’. Climate cultures should be understood in the present work as aspectual, collectively shared knowledge constructions about climate change.
