Climate Anthropology

SOAN61032 Climate Anthropology 15 Semester 2 Postgraduate Taught Level 6 Hannah Knox Unit coordinator Anthropology 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Masters/Integrated Masters P4 ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 7.5 What if climate change wasn’t a single global problem but a collection of situated challenges which confront different people in different ways?  This course explodes the myth that climate change is one big thing, and instead introduces students to the diversity of experiences and perspectives of climate change as it is understood, materialised, and confronted by different groups around the world.  On the course you will learn what climate change means, and how it manifests, for scientists, policy makers, activists and local communities. You will learn how different groups come to know about climate change and what the implications of this knowledge are for framing different kinds of solutions.  The course will also reflexively engage with anthropology’s own contribution to studying and tackling climate change. You will learn about the unique perspective anthropologists can bring to understanding the human dimensions of climate change, as well as having the opportunity to explore what other kinds of methods and collaborations anthropologists might need to engage in as they also confront this ongoing challenge.    What if climate change wasn’t a single global problem but a collection of situated challenges which confront different people in different ways?  This course explodes the myth that climate change is one big thing, and instead introduces students to the diversity of experiences and perspectives of climate change as it is understood, materialised, and confronted by different groups around the world.  On the course you will learn what climate change means, and how it manifests, for scientists, policy makers, activists and local communities. You will learn how different groups come to know about climate change and what the implications of this knowledge are for framing different kinds of solutions.  The course will also reflexively engage with anthropology’s own contribution to studying and tackling climate change. You will learn about the unique perspective anthropologists can bring to understanding the human dimensions of climate change, as well as having the opportunity to explore what other kinds of methods and collaborations anthropologists might need to engage in as they also confront this ongoing challenge.    The unit aims to introduce students to the emerging field of climate anthropology. In recent years anthropologists have been exploring the diverse social manifestations of climate change. This has included in-depth ethnography with climate affected communities, studies of climate scientists, the analysis of legal cases against oil companies, ethnographic studies of climate policy-making at a global and local level and explorations of the more unexpected translations of climate change into other kinds of objects and subjects affecting people’s lives. In this unit students will be introduced to these diverse cultures of climate change and invited to explore through close engagement with practical, real-world examples, how climate change manifests as a cultural artifact which produces concrete social and political effects.  As well as exploring different ways in which climate change is framed and understood, we will also look at the challenges that climate change poses to anthropological methods and practice. We will explore how climate change is prompting anthropologists to develop engaged, creative, and activist forms of anthropological practice and will ask what we as anthropologists can do to help understand and confront the ongoing challenges of climate breakdown. By the end of this course students will have an excellent grasp of the cultural politics of climate change and will be equipped to demonstrate the value of a human-centred approach to understanding and tackling climate change.  Syllabus (indicative curriculum content):Week 1: Introduction to Climate Anthropology   Week 2: Cultures of Climate Science   Week 3: Ethnographies of Global Policy  Week 4: Climate Activisms  Week 5: Climate on the ground: Ethnographies of Local Policy   Week 8: Climate’s Translations: Encounter, Incommensurability, Conflict  Week 6: Down to Earth: Rematerialising Climate  Week 7: Colonialism and the Climate  Week 9: Anthropological Methods for a Climate Changing World?  Week 10: Course wrap up.     By the end of the course students will be able to:  -Think deeply and critically about the ways that climate is experienced from different vantage points.  - To have learnt about scientific, legal and local experiences and understandings of climate and to be able to contrast these and understand their differences.- To understand the difference between climate change as a modern knowledge object and other kinds of environmental perception that exceed their framing as climate related. To engage these differences as situated forms of social and cultural practice and to understand how social and cultural practices are entangled with material processes.-To have the tools to think critically about the political and social effects of different climate framings in different contexts.  -To have gained the analytical and conceptual resources to argue the need for an anthropology of climate change that focuses on cultures of climate change (rather than technologies or global politics of climate change).  -To have been introduced to the methodological challenges and innovations opening up in and around the anthropology of climate change.  -To be assessed on their understanding of the course through a close critical engagement with key climate anthropology concepts, explored through their manifestation in ethnographic writing on climate change.    Students will be expected to develop and deepen their digital skills by engaging in online searches for resources to support their learning – including literature searches and research for online resources to bring to seminars.Seminars will be structured around close exploration of key concepts introduced within climate anthropology (Justice, Neighbourliness, Convivality, Environmental Citizenship, Place, Comparison, Activism). They will be required to think about the analytical usefulness of these concepts by bringing them into conversation with real world examples manifest in a variety of media including digital tools and platforms such as online carbon footprinting tools, climate focused instagram accounts, research platforms like Feral Atlas, AI platforms such as Chat GPT, as well as policy documents, podcasts and novels. Through seminar discussion and the use of an online Miro board, students will be supported to critically interrogate key concepts. They will gain important skills in collective discussion and deliberation over the usefulness of emerging concepts for different contexts and settings.     This course will be taught through small group seminars. Each seminar will focus on one to two key concepts that have been introduced through that week’s readings. Students will be required to bring at least one concrete example (news story, film, podcast, policy document, web discussion) to complement their reading. This example will need to either evidence or contradict that week’s concept. Materials shared through the seminars (readings, examples and ideas) will be collated on a shared Miro board, which will serve as a learning resource when students come to write their essays.     0 Other 100% <ul><li>3000 word essay (worth 100%);</li></ul>  Written feedback - 15 working days. N Week 1: Introduction to Climate Anthropology:   Crate, S. A. (2011). "Climate and Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary Climate Change." Annual review of anthropology 40(Volume 40, 2011): 175-194.  Crate. S and Nuttall, M (2024) “Introduction: From Transformations to Worldmaking” in Anthropology and Climate Change: From Transformations to Worldmaking (3rd Edition).   de Wit, S. and S. Haines (2022). "Climate change reception studies in anthropology." WIREs Climate Change 13(1): e742.  Ingold, T. (2010). "Footprints through the weather-world: walking, breathing, knowing." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: S121-S139.Week 2: Cultures of Climate Science:  Knox, H. (2020). Thinking like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change. Durham, NH, Duke University Press. (Introduction and Ch 1)  Allen, M. R., et al. (2022). "Net Zero: Science, Origins, and Implications." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 47(Volume 47, 2022): 849-887.  O'Reilly, J. (2017). The technocratic Antarctic: an ethnography of scientific expertise and environmental governance / Jessica O'Reilly. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.  Walford, A. (2012). "Data Moves: Taking Amazon Climate Science Seriously." Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 30(2): 101-117.  Edwards, Paul N. 2010. A Vast Machine, Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.  Hall, E. F. and T. Sanders (2015). "Accountability and the academy: producing knowledge about the human dimensions of climate change." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21(2): 438-461.Week 3: Ethnographies of Global Policy:  Ethnographic Insights into Climate Worlds https://aesengagement.wordpress.com/2024/05/09/ethnographic-insights-into-climate-worlds/   Whitington, Jerome. 2016. ‘Carbon as a Metric of the Human’. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 39 (1): 46–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12130.  Lohmann, L. (2010). "Neoliberalism and the calculable world: The rise of carbon trading." The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism, Zed Books, London and New York: 77-93.Week 4: Climate Activisms: Swyngedouw, E. (2013). "The non-political politics of climate change." ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 12(1): 1-8.  Swyngedouw, E. (2010). "Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change." Theory, Culture and Society: Special Issue on Changing Climates 27(2): 213-232.  Beuret, Nicholas. 2017. ‘Counting Carbon: Calculative Activism and Slippery Infrastructure’. Antipode 49 (5): 1164–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12317.  Eriksen, Thomas Hylland.   ———. 2021. ‘Generation Climate Change’. Social Anthropology 29 (1): 219–21. Goldhill, Simon, and Georgie Fitzgibbon. 2021. ‘Climate Activism: Introduction’. Journal of the British Academy 9s5: 1–5. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s5.001.  Hornborg, Alf. 2021. ‘A Pandemic Can Do What a Movement Cannot’. Social Anthropology 29 (1): 210–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.13005.  Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. Edinburgh: AK Press.  Juris, J. S. (2008). Networking Futures : The Movements against Corporate Globalization. Durham, Duke University Press.  Malm, A. (2021). How to blow up a pipeline : learning to fight in a world on fire. London, Verso Books.Week 5: Climate Development: Ethnographies of Local Climate Policy:   Dewan, C. (2022). "‘Climate Change as a Spice’: Brokering Environmental Knowledge in Bangladesh’s Development Industry." Ethnos 87(3): 538-559.  Knox, H. (2020). Thinking like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change. Durham, NH, Duke University Press. (Chapters 3 and 4)  Riles, A. (2006). Documents: Lectures 20 Tutorials 10 0 120 Course access to Miro or an equivalent electronic whiteboard with the same functionality as Miro.  .This course incorporates equality, diversity and inclusion by putting the question of how to diversify our understanding of climate change at its core. The reading list will be compiled with this diversity in mind, where possible bringing the voices of indigenous, BAME and non-western authors into conversation with European and North American anthropologists.  Beyond the reading list, students will be required, in preparation for tutorials, to explore and find resources that represent climate change from different stances and to reflect on the historical and cultural bases of these representations.