ABSTRACT
We began this book with the idea of producing a comprehensive assessment of anthropology’s engagement with climate change, but also to map 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. Although anthropologists talk about the weather with the people with whom they live, research, and work, and even though climate enters into our considerations of ecology, culture, and human-environment interactions, climate change research has long been regarded the domain of practitioners of various disciplines in the natural sciences. Indeed, identifying the causes and nature of climate change, and assessing its impacts, is something physical scientists still claim as their legitimate prerogative (Duerden 2004), leaving social scientists alone in their considerations of how to explain how the physical manifestations of change are perceived, experienced, interpreted, and negotiated at community levels.
