ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes some case studies that work to illustrate climate change's direct interrelationship with human culture and anthropology's privileged position to investigate that relationship. It explores what anthropologists are doing and can/need to do both in their field research context, in the larger anthropology community, and to reach out to wider audiences from the local to the global. Climate change is having impacts on culture, ways of life, spirituality, and in other arenas that are not "obvious". Anthropologists are finding evidence/effects of climate change in "unexpected" places. There are both theoretical/epistemological reasons, and methodological reasons. The book provides a detailed analysis of anthropology's long history of and privileged role in working with human migration in response to both short- and long-term environmental change.
