scholarly journals How Do the Cultural Dimensions of Climate Shape Our Understanding of Climate Change?

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Jason Alexandra
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Natural Hybrid ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
Hybrid Nature ◽  
Murray Darling Basin ◽  
The Social

Climatic events express the dynamics of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, but are profoundly personal and social in their impacts, representation and comprehension. This paper explores how knowledge of the climate has multiple scales and dimensions that intersect in our experience of the climate. The climate is objective and subjective, scientific and cultural, local and global, and personal and political. These divergent dimensions of the climate frame the philosophical and cultural challenges of a dynamic climate. Drawing on research into the adaptation in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin, this paper outlines the significance of understanding the cultural dimensions of the changing climate. This paper argues for greater recognition of the ways in which cultures co-create the climate and, therefore, that the climate needs to be recognised as a socio-natural hybrid. Given the climate’s hybrid nature, research should aim to integrate our understanding of the social and the natural dimensions of our relationships to a changing climate.

Force fields of the modern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prem Poddar
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Force Fields ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Levels

The essentially contested notion of the modern, and its cognate form “modernity,” have a long intellectual history. The emergence and dissemination of the idea of Western modernity was sometimes forcibly imposed, sometimes partially accepted, and sometimes resisted at different levels around the globe. Recent thinking has produced qualifiers and prefixes such as “unfinished,” “post-,” “late,” “inevitable,” “contra-,” “alternative,” or “differential” in relation to modernity, to signal the striations in approaches, interpretations, and positionings towards what is seen as an umbrella term to describe the various possibilities that can be brought to bear while considering contentions in contemporary theory and praxis. The social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of this field of forces are integral to any thinking about the symbolic contestation of power in multifarious re-imaginings. This article charts this field mainly by looking at the colonial and postcolonial interventions that have impacted and continue to the present day to effect and inflect cultures and societies, including pressing questions of climate change and cyberspace. Sections are sorted under the following sub-headings: “The vortex of the modern;” “Subaltern bodies, subversive minds;” “Communication and colonization: Re-inventing space and time;” “Borderlands, migrations, identities;” and “Contesting and controlling cyberspace.”

scholarly journals High mountain community in a changing climate: a study of agropastoral adaptation in mustang district, Nepal

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-70
Author(s):  
Prakash Upadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Adaptive Strategy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Community Capacity ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
Climate Resilience ◽  
Mountain Community

This paper explores the changing climate, its impact, and the diversified practices of agropastoral adaption by a mountain community of Nepal. The findings reveal that there is an unswerving link between the changes in climate and their impact on the community and its adaptation options. The vulnerability and risk induced by the climate change has threatened the agropastoral subsistence, the sociocultural and economic structure, and the food sovereignty of the Loba community of Mustang district of Nepal and made them experience unanticipated complications in livelihood. In a changing climate, the community has attuned and restructured its adaptive strategy with diversified practices of collective labour in a traditional agropastoral system of landholding, mystical connectivity and seasonal relocation as an adaptive response ensuring the shared sustenance of the com munity. The challenge of climate change began long ago; it will persevere and be long- lasting. Hence, this paper argues for the need for a prudent adoption of measures to maintain an environmentally suitable agropastoral system of liveli hood well-being. Beyond enhancing community capacity and climate resilience, it is necessary to streamline and readjust indigenous sociocultural institutions by expanding their adaptive capacity, while recognizing the cultural dimensions grounded in systems of meanings and relationships and the way people and their culture experience and respond to exceptional climatic changes.

Managing Murray–Darling Basin livestock systems in a variable and changing climate: challenges and opportunities

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 293 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Crimp ◽  
C. J. Stokes ◽  
S. M. Howden ◽  
A. D. Moore ◽  
B. Jacobs ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Composite Index ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Financial Capital ◽  
Weather Factors ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
Murray Darling Basin ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

The key biophysical impacts associated with projected climate change in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) include: declines in pasture productivity, reduced forage quality, livestock heat stress, greater problems with some pests and weeds, more frequent droughts, more intense rainfall events, and greater risks of soil degradation. The most arid and least productive rangelands in the MDB region may be the most severely impacted by climate change, while the more productive eastern and northern grazing lands in the MDB may provide some opportunities for slight increases in production. In order to continue to thrive in the future, livestock industries need to anticipate these changes, prepare for uncertainty, and develop adaptation strategies now. While climate change will have direct effects on livestock, the dominant influences on grazing enterprises in the MDB will be through changes in plant growth and the timing, quantity and quality of forage availability. Climate change will involve a complex mix of responses to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, rising temperatures, changes in rainfall and other weather factors, and broader issues related to how people collectively and individually respond to these changes. Enhancing the ability of individuals to respond to a changing climate will occur through building adaptive capacity. We have, via secondary data, selected from the Australian Agricultural and Grazing Industries Survey, built a national composite index of generic adaptive capacity of rural households. This approach expresses adaptive capacity as an emergent property of the diverse forms of human, social, natural, physical and financial capital from which livelihoods are derived. Human capital was rated as ‘high’ across the majority of the MDB compared with the rest of Australia, while social, physical and financial capital were rated as ‘moderate’ to ‘low’. The resultant measure of adaptive capacity, made up of the five capitals, was ‘low’ in the northern and central-west regions of the MDB and higher in the central and eastern parts possibly indicating a greater propensity to adapt to climate change in these regions.

scholarly journals SOCIO-CULTURAL CHALLENGES OF ENGLISH TEACHING IN REMOTE AREAS OF INDONESIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Dwi Poedjiastutie ◽  
Velmi Mayaputri ◽  
Yudhi Arifani
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
English Teaching ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
Remote Areas ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Underdeveloped Region

The development of English language learning in any country is interdependent with its socio-cultural experiences. Learning is determined by the social, historical, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of its context. This study aims to explore the socio-cultural challenges of teaching English in a remote area. It was conducted in Pemana Island (East Nusa Tenggara) using the ethnography exploration. Pemana is one of the Indonesian government’s target locations for a teaching program to improve educational quality and overcome the problem of limited number of teachers in remote areas. This program involves bachelor degree holders of English being deployed to teach in the frontier, outlying and underdeveloped region. Several challenges of English teaching and learning emerge due to socio-cultural aspects. These include the economic situation of the society, the community beliefs about English teaching, and the ill-fitting curriculum with the social condition. The teaching implications are then discussed here.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND LAND USE IN SOUTHEASTERN U.S.: DID THE “DUMB FARMER” GET IT WRONG?

2016 ◽  
Vol 07 (03) ◽  
pp. 1650005 ◽  
Author(s):  
TSVETAN TSVETANOV ◽  
LINGQIAO QI ◽  
DEEP MUKHERJEE ◽  
FARHED SHAH ◽  
BORIS BRAVO-URETA
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Farmland Preservation ◽  
Fixed Amount ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Welfare Impacts ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Substantial Bias ◽  
Land Policies

The assumption of a fixed amount of land remaining in agriculture regardless of changing climate conditions — one of the features of the “dumb farmer scenario” — is likely to bias the estimated social welfare impacts of climate change. In order to quantify this bias, we employ a demand-supply framework to determine both the amount of land allocated to agricultural and nonagricultural uses as well as the social welfare associated with this allocation choice when no market distortions exist. We present an application of our model to the Southeastern United States and simulate the effects of changing climate conditions on land allocation in the region between 2007 and 2040. We find a very modest welfare bias when maintaining current farmland preservation policies and a more substantial bias if we assume that additional land policies are instituted which have spillover welfare effects in other land-using sectors.

Living Paradox in Riverine Bangladesh: Whiteheadian Perspectives on Ganga Devi and Khwaja Khijir

1969 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naveeda Khan
Keyword(s):  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Physical Entity ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many

We begin with the words of rural and riverine women from Bangladesh recalling the events of their children's deaths by drowning. These events are cast as the work of supernatural beings, specifically Ganga Devi and Khwaja Khijir, who compel the mothers into forgetfulness and entice the children to the water. Is this a disavowal of loss and responsibility? This article considers that the women, specifically those from northern Bangladesh, assert not only their understanding of the losses that they have suffered but also their changing relationship to the river and its changing nature through their evocations of mythological figures. Alongside the many experiences of the river, the article takes note of its experience as paradoxical, with paradoxicality serving as the occasion for the coming together of the mythological, the material, and the social. The article draws upon Alfred North Whitehead to interrelate the strata of myths and their permutations, with the women's experiences of the river, and the river as a physical entity, allowing us to explore how the women's expressions portend the changing climate.

scholarly journals An Attack on the Separation of Powers? Strategic Climate Litigation in the Eyes of U.S. Judges

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8335
Author(s):  
Jasmina Nedevska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Research Plan

Climate change litigation has emerged as a powerful tool as societies steer towards sustainable development. Although the litigation mainly takes place in domestic courts, the implications can be seen as global as specific climate rulings influence courts across national borders. However, while the phenomenon of judicialization is well-known in the social sciences, relatively few have studied issues of legitimacy that arise as climate politics move into courts. A comparatively large part of climate cases have appeared in the United States. This article presents a research plan for a study of judges’ opinions and dissents in the United States, regarding the justiciability of strategic climate cases. The purpose is to empirically study how judges navigate a perceived normative conflict—between the litigation and an overarching ideal of separation of powers—in a system marked by checks and balances.

scholarly journals Lyell, the Geikies and Croll's observations on terrestrial glacial sediments and landforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
James ROSE
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Glacial Sediments ◽  
Direct Observations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social And Physical Environment ◽  
Glacial Landforms

ABSTRACT Within the context of the work and achievements of James Croll, this paper reviews the records of direct observations of glacial landforms and sediments made by Charles Lyell, Archibald and James Geikie and James Croll himself, in order to evaluate their contributions to the sciences of glacial geology and Quaternary environmental change. The paper outlines the social and physical environment of Croll's youth and contrasts this with the status and experiences of Lyell and the Geikies. It also outlines the character and role of the ‘Glasgow School’ of geologists, who stimulated Croll's interest into the causes of climate change and directed his focus to the glacial and ‘interglacial’ deposits of central Scotland. Contributions are outlined in chronological order, drawing attention to: (i) Lyell's high-quality observations and interpretations of glacial features in Glen Clova and Strathmore and his subsequent rejection of the glacial theory in favour of processes attributed to floating icebergs; (ii) the significant impact of Archibald Geikie's 1863 paper on the ‘glacial drift of Scotland’, which firmly established the land-ice theory; (iii) the fact that, despite James Croll's inherent dislike of geology and fieldwork, he provided high-quality descriptions and interpretations of the landforms and sediments of central Scotland in order to test his theory of climate change; and (iv) the great communication skills of James Geikie, enhanced by contacts and evidence from around the world. It is concluded that whilst direct observations of glacial landforms and sediments were critical to the long-term development of the study of glaciation, the acceptance of this theory was dependent also upon the skills, personality and status of the Geikies and Croll, who developed and promoted the concepts. Sadly, the subsequent rejection of the land-ice concept by Lyell resulted in the same factors challenging the acceptance of the glacial theory.

scholarly journals Comparative analysis of the social vulnerability assessment to climate change applied to fisheries from Spain and Turkey

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Gómez Murciano ◽  
Yajie Liu ◽  
Vahdet Ünal ◽  
José Luis Sánchez LIzaso
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Vulnerability Assessment ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Aegean Sea ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Vulnerability To Climate Change ◽  
Fishing Sector ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Vulnerability Assessment ◽  
Structured Questionnaire

AbstractThe aim of this study is to assess the climate effects on fisheries from a bottom-up approach based on fishers’ fishing experience, knowledge, and perceptions. To perform this task, a social vulnerability assessment was conducted in two different fishing areas: one in Spain and the other one in Turkey. The vulnerability was measured using the collected data and information through a structured questionnaire, and surveys were carried out among fishers in the Castelló (Spain) and the Aegean Sea (Turkey) between 2018 and 2019. Overall, the results indicated that the two studied regions have a moderate to high vulnerability and that the Aegean Sea was slightly more vulnerable than Castelló. It was also found that storms and temperature are the main climatic stressors that affect the fishing sector, and the economic indicators such as revenue from fishing in both regions showed high degrees of sensitivity. To reduce the vulnerability to climate change, adaptive measures should be implemented while taking into consideration the specific socio-economic and institutional characteristics of each region. In conclusion, the effects of climate change on the fishing sector and their social vulnerability are diverse. Consequently, there is no single climate measure that can minimize the vulnerability of fishing sectors in different regions.

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