ABSTRACT
This chapter conceptualizes anthropogenic climate change. In modern times, anthropologists commonly study big issues in small places, as well as carry out multisited studies across physical settings and structural locations in hierarchical social systems. This has led to the study of entwined social and environmental/climatic complexity. In this chapter, we introduce a human socioecological framework that guides our discussion of the human/climate change interface. The model is comprised of three linked concepts—“anthropogenic climate turmoil,” “ecocrisis or pluralea interactions,” and “environmental unpredictability,” and the associated concepts of “perceived precarity” and “vulnerability.” “Climate turmoil” refers to the entwined processes of global warming, weather extremes, diverse and even seemingly contradictory expressions of climate change, and mounting erraticism. Climate turmoil is a changing climate that occurs in a context of interacting ecocrises, such as air pollution or ocean depletion of foodstocks. For human communities, the result is a sense that the environment has become unstable and unpredictable, and that people are more vulnerable.
