ABSTRACT
Knowledge circulation plays an important role in the institutionalisation of new academic fields and in the legitimisation of the knowledge they produce. This chapter examines the different ways in which climate science has been institutionalised as an academic field in Australia, Brazil and Chile. Whereas climate science in Australia was established as a disputed political field, reinforcing the country’s position as a knowledge centre in the Global South, climate science in Brazil was developed as an alternative model to the climate science established in the Global North, emphasising a more nationalistic approach. In Chile, by contrast, climate science is a nascent field, highly oriented to the norms and practices of climate knowledge centres in the Global North. Despite these different dynamics, some common factors are present in the consolidation of climate science as a new academic field in all three countries, namely (a) the urgency and visibility of the climate crisis; (b) states’ increasing demand for knowledge about the climate in light of the acknowledged negative social impacts of climate change; (c) the position of key local climate scientists in international networks; (d) the role of boundary objects in assembling new knowledge about the climate and (e) the networking of researchers from different disciplines and with different actors hailing from academia, NGOs and governments.
