Anthropology and Climate Change ─ From Encounters to Actions

The first book to comprehensively assess anthropology’s engagement with climate change, this pioneering volume both maps out exciting trajectories for research and issues a call to action. Chapters in part one are systematic research reviews, covering the relationship between culture and climate from prehistoric times to the present; changing anthropological discourse on climate and environment; the diversity of environmental and sociocultural changes currently occurring around the globe; and the unique methodological and epistemological tools anthropologists bring to bear on climate research. Part two includes a series of case studies that highlights leading-edge research—including some unexpected and provocative findings. Part three challenges scholars to be proactive on the front lines of climate change, providing instruction on how to work in with research communities, with innovative forms of communication, in higher education, in policy environments, as individuals, and in other critical arenas. Linking sophisticated knowledge to effective actions, Anthropology and Climate Change is essential for students and scholars in anthropology and environmental studies.

Susan A. Crate is an anthropologist in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University and author of Cows, Kin and Globalization: The Ethnography of Sustainability (AltaMira Press 2006). Mark Nuttall holds the Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta. He is editor of the landmark, three-volume Encyclopedia of the Arctic (Routledge 2005) and author or editor of many other books.