ABSTRACT
Within mainstream climate science, the concept of climate is typically understood as ‘the average weather’. Represented through statistical indices of meteorological processes, climate is argued to be an objective and external influence on human society. In this contribution, I argue that this conceptualisation of climate is both limited and limiting, particularly when it comes to the politics of climate change adaptation. In response, the chapter presents an alternative way of understanding climate that foregrounds how societies actively work with meteorological forces and build them into our lived environments, from agricultural landscapes through to the way we design cities. This means that climate is not an objective outside constraint upon society but is produced through the interaction of social and biophysical forces. Using examples from research in rural India, the chapter shows how this alternative understanding of climate rooted in human experience raises important questions for how we approach the question of climate change adaptation.
