ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the idea of producing a comprehensive assessment of anthropology's engagement with climate change. It maps out where the discipline can head as it carves out new research and policy-oriented approaches and examines the dynamics of various epistemologies and practices. Scientists talk about climate, and they seek to develop sophisticated tools to study variations in climate that occur on time scales from seasonal to many millions of years; presumably anthropologists tend to only talk about the weather. The chapter explains the climate change down to earth, allow it to assume and be understood in its many human faces, on an earth experienced by more and more people as a highly shifting ground. Environmental anthropologists and other social scientists have combined remote sensing techniques with an understanding of the human use of resources. Anthropologists have also worked in multidisciplinary teams with other social scientists and natural scientists to understand human interactions with the carbon cycle.