sign in sign up
<<
Home , Climatology

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE

provided by SHAREOK repository Progress report

Progress in Human 2014, Vol. 38(3) 476–489 ª The Author(s) 2013 III: Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav matters DOI: 10.1177/0309132513501429 phg.sagepub.com

Karl Offen The University of Oklahoma, USA

Abstract My third report covering recent research in historical geography focuses on climate, and particularly scholarship that explores how the meaning of climate and varies in distinct cultural and temporal contexts. Viewing climate science, and more specifically interpretations of climate science, as a discourse amenable to cultural criticism suggests that notions of climate are and have always been a physical and social phenomenon. Reviewed research suggests that ideas of climate and climate change are intertwined with social mores, politics and institutions, philosophies of civilization and progress, and inseparable from the cultural expressions that give them meaning and, thus, are far too important to be left to climate to narrate or interpret.

Keywords climate, climate change, climate discourse, cultures of climate, historical geography

I Introduction But the pendulum swings both ways. Preindus- trial peoples also had the power to impact their Climate matters. This was certainly the case for climate. A study by Nevle et al. (2011) suggests the Mongols and their subjects. Scholars once that the demographic collapse associated with speculated that prolonged drought inspired the the Columbian voyages during the 16th century Mongols to conquer their neighbors, but new created a widespread slowdown in biomass climate histories suggest the opposite. Tree ring burning as well as high rates of reforestation data now indicate that during the 20-year period across the Americas, and especially in the Neo- between 1211 and 1230 C.E. – corresponding . The resultant , they posit, with the expansionist heyday of Genghis Khan explains the rapid decline in atmospheric CO (Chinggis Khaan) – Mongolia enjoyed warm 2 concentration and contributed to the so-called temperatures and more rainfall than at any point Little Ice Age (see also Dull et al., 2010). These in the previous 900 years (Hvistendahl, 2012). studies are fascinating and illustrate why know- A warmer and wetter Steppe provided a banquet ing something about climate and climate change for Mongolian horses, an opportune moment for the son of a concubine to rise up, unite nomadic tribes, and create the world’s largest land-based empire. Although Hvistendahl ends her article Corresponding author: Department of Geography and Environmental Sust- with a sentence crediting Chinggis and his army ainability, The University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd with their success, her story essentially over- Street, SEC 510, Norman, Oklahoma 73019-1007, USA. turns one climate-determinist tale with another. Email: [email protected]

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 477 matters. Yet none of these sorts of studies tells papers that illuminate the culturally specific and us how climate or climate change was concep- the spatially and temporally contingent dimen- tualized by those who experienced it. Would it sions ofclimate and its various meanings (see also not be nice to know what concepts the Mongols Livingstone, 2012). They seek ‘to identify ways used to comprehend seasonal variability in rain- to re-particularise climate change discourses, to fall, or if they understood a relationship between explore the meaning of climate and for climate and culture, especially among the peo- different groups at different points in time and ples and lands they conquered? And what about to question the ontological status of climate’ the peoples of the Atlantic World? What did (Endfield and Morris, 2012a: 2). The History of they make of the Little Ice Age? To be fair, Science Society devoted a lengthy issue of their scholarship has addressed some of these issues, journal Orisis to ‘Revisiting Klima’(Flemingand but these are the sorts of climate matters – scho- Jankovic´, 2011). Contributors to the issue seek to larship that seeks to reculture climate and con- revive the multivocal and inclusive understand- temporaneous meanings ascribed to climate ing of the ancient Greek term Klima and its rela- and climate change – that form the principal tionship to medical, geographical, agricultural, focus of my third progress report summarizing economic, racial, and other concerns. More spe- recent work in historical geography (Offen, cifically, the editors seek to decouple Klima from 2012, 2013). its current exclusive association with statistical Climate also matters to historical geogra- averages and the atmospheric sciences. On the phers. As I write this, two of the top five whole, the collection asks what is climate, most downloaded articles from the Journal exactly, and what does the concept seek to explain of Historical Geography, according to the when it is invoked (Fleming and Jankovic´, 2011)? Elsevier website www.journals.elsevier.com/ At least three recent journal special issues explore journal-of-historical-geography, relate to cli- ideas of climate with respect to indigenous mate change. One of them, Diana Liverman’s peoples (Aporta et al., 2011; Green and Raygoro- ‘Conventions of climate change’ (2009), has been detsky, 2010; Salick and Ross, 2009). Mean- among the top downloads since its publication as while, the special issue of the Annals of the part of the special issue ‘Narratives of climate Association of American titled change’ (Daniels and Endfield, 2009). Another ‘Geographical Perspectives on Climate Change’ article from the same collection remains in the top devoted very little attention to the revival of ten (Bravo, 2009). This suggests that historical cultural approaches to the study of climate geographers are truly interested in ‘narratives of (Aspinall, 2010). In contrast, the relatively new climate change’, or that others consulting the sub- journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate field’s leading journal do so for its analysis of Change (cited as WIREs Climate Change), edited such narratives, or both. The answer is likely byMikeHulme, seeks to bring the humanities and both. Over the last five years a number of journals social sciences into dialogue with the physical read by historical geographers have devoted spe- and life sciences so that we can gain a wider per- cial issues to reframing climate and climate spective on how climate and climate change are change as a discourse amenable to cultural and understood, analysed, and contested around the geographical analysis. Endfield and Morris world. Two recent review pieces therein do par- (2012a) edited a special issue of Climatic Change ticularly well in historicizing the evolution and titled ‘Cultural spaces of climate’. Lamenting that use of climate ideas and knowledge (Carey, scientific discourse is de facto authorized to 2012; Heymann, 2010). frame climate and climate change and their Treating climate change as a discourse amen- respective meanings, the editors set out to present able to cultural critique does not mean scholars

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 478 Progress in 38(3) pursuing this line of reasoning doubt that climate evident by our use of concepts such as ‘anthropo- change is ‘real’ or that many real people will not genic climate change’ or the Anthropocene – be adversely affected. Instead, these scholars since humans have long impacted nature and cli- question how the topic is framed, the implicit mate at global and geologic scales (Chakrabarty, assumptions being made, the de-politicization 2009; Sayre, 2012). of knowledge production and interpretation, and Other critiques center on the neo-environ- how new climate futures can be imagined by mentalist and determinist arguments that often reconceptualizing the past (see DeSilvey et al., frame the entire discussion of climate change 2011; Hamblyn, 2009; Hulme, 2009; O’Neill (Hulme, 2011; Radcliffe et al., 2010). The way et al., 2010). As with all science, climate science in which climate discourse turns over explana- does not speak for itself, it is always interpreted tory power to the biophysical sphere as deter- and, therefore, simultaneously political and cul- mining human behavior and culture seems to tural. Recognizing this, and opening spaces for be re-emerging without the benefit of more than humanistic scholarship on climate and climate a half-century of research to the contrary. For change, thus, seeks to complicate climate dis- Hulme (2011), the re-emergence of a climate courses and inspire new social understandings, determinism that explains the interaction criticisms, and practices (see Howe, 2011; Sabin, between societies and their environments is a 2010). Some scholars aim their critique of cli- species of climate reductionism, ‘a form of anal- mate change discourse squarely at a capitalist ysis and prediction in which climate is first system that on the one hand demands the unend- extracted from the matrix of interdependencies ing economic growth that drives climate change, that shape human life within the physical world’ while on the other hand obscures the uneven (p. 247). Once isolated, climate is ‘then elevated landscapes of human vulnerability that the sys- to the role of dominant predictor variable’ tem largely created, all the while supporting tech- (p. 247). The danger for Hulme is that an overt nical fixes that commodify the atmosphere and form of neo-environmental determinism informs address neither the drivers of climate change nor our predictive understanding of future those most vulnerable to its effects (Liverman, and societies, and hence, human destiny (see also 2009; see also Cupples, 2012; Head and Gibson, DeSilvey, 2012; DeSilvey et al., 2011). Climate 2012; Parenti, 2011). In his critique of climate change will surely not determine the future, but discourse, Wainwright (2010) points out that our it will constrain and enable the choices that indi- understanding of the physical processes produc- viduals, communities, and societies make, and this ing climate change has outrun our explanations creates a lot of space for geographers to explore of the social processes driving them. For Wain- how climate matters, where, and for whom. wright, a capitalist world-view and its control With these thoughts in mind, my paper of the terms even used to discuss the parameters reviews historical, geographical, and like- of climate change are ‘incompatible with an minded scholarship that falls into three non- effective global response to climate change’ exclusive thematic areas. The first particularizes (p. 988). Other scholarly critiques of contempo- climate experiences, often among place-spe- rary climate discourses have emerged around cific peoples. A second grouping presents recent schemes of elite intervention and pie-in-the- scholarship dealing with the ideas of, and sky geo-engineering strategies (Fleming, 2006, cultural meanings associated with, climate and 2010; Fleming et al., 2006), statistical manipula- climate change in specific spatial-temporal or tion and the benchmark constructions of ‘normal’ social contexts. A third assemblage examines climates (Hulme, 2009; Hulme et al., 2009), and the changing historical attributed the continued separation of people from nature as to climate change in specific places.

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 479

II Climate and the human 2012c) further explore how everyday people experience engage with and understand information, participate in data collection, and The modern, scientific concept of climate might form gendered identities through their activities. be an abstract statistical index, but it matters to Where research on the relationship between people in unambiguous ways, in specific culture, climate, and place has excelled is locales, and in particular instances (Crate, among indigenous peoples, but this research 2011; Endfield and Morris, 2012a; Jankovic´and does not always have direct links to the concerns Barboza, 2009; Ulloa, 2011). Geographers and of historical geographers (see Aporta et al., others have long understood that most peoples 2011; Green and Raygorodetsky, 2010; Leduc, adjust and adapt to changing environmental 2011; Parker and Grossman, 2012; Salick and conditions within socially sanctioned para- Ross, 2009). Rather than present indigenous meters and understandings based on cultural peoples as helpless victims of changes outside values, needs, and abilities – though often not of their control, these studies demonstrate the under conditions of their own making (Birken- adaptive capacities of peoples already reliant holtz, 2012; Butzer, 2012; Butzer and Endfield, on keen observation, time-tested (i.e. well-ada- 2012; Head, 2010). Following Barnett (2010), pted) traditional knowledge, and risk-averse Geoghegan and Leyson (2012) take a cultural strategies. Salick and Ross (2009) specifically geography approach to understand how lay nar- remind us that indigenous peoples have always ratives of climate change are grounded in farm- been adapting to change, climatic and other- ing practices in the Lizard Peninsula in wise, but that their success has generally relied Cornwall, . Their ethnographic work upon biological diversity, something that cli- interprets farmer narratives in relation to ‘struc- mate change is rapidly impacting, especially tures of feeling and senses of place’ (p. 56). in high latitudinal and altitudinal locations. They find that, although externally generated Research by Orlove et al. (2010) in southern climate change discourses are ever-present, Uganda reveals the multiple ways in which the people construct their own understandings farmers make sense of climate and weather, and through local memories, observations, and con- also the social context in which these under- versations, and ground them in place through standings come about. Their study finds four farming practices (see also Brace and Geoghe- major components of a knowledge system: gan, 2011; Crate, 2011; Head et al., 2011). End- long-term familiarity with the seasonal patterns field seeks to build on findings like these to of and temperature; local and tra- reculture and particularize climate narratives ditional climate indicators; observation; and in order to have them resonate better with the information about seasonal change elsewhere public than the current, sterile metanarratives. in the region. In other studies the effects of cli- She explores the writings of British meteorolo- mate change on indigenous peoples are difficult gist and Gordon Manley whose to disentangle from the impacts caused by polit- work targeted popular audiences in the second ical or economic changes: in short, negative half of the 20th century (Endfield, 2011). Man- impacts are often mutually reinforcing (Dinero, ley’s work studied climate through places, peo- 2013; Lorimer, 2012; Sa´nchez-Corte´s and ple, and their experiences with British weather. Lazos Chavero, 2011). Endfield argues that Manley’s approach has a lot Because the impacts of climate change are to teach us today because he effectively commu- generally felt first at the poles, Arctic peoples nicated what intangible and statistical informa- and environments have received a lot of scho- tion does not. Endfield and Morris (2012b, larly attention. A special issue of The Canadian

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 480 Progress in Human Geography 38(3)

Geographer (Aporta et al., 2011) covers the Yet epistemic and ontological quandaries can impacts of climate change on and the and do present themselves when seeking to Inuit, and contains several articles that may establish a dialogue between indigenous or local interest historical geographers. For example, experiences on the one hand, and western sci- Aporta and MacDonald (2011) analyze the oral ence and discourses about climate change on the accounts of an Inuit elder to show the wealth of other (Peppler, 2010; Watson and Huntington, knowledge about past climatic conditions con- 2008). Indigenous peoples often understand tained therein, but also the difficulty in extract- weather, climate, and climate change through ing those accounts from their specific social and cosmological and religious beliefs that are not environmental contexts. Still, the authors high- always compatible with linear conceptions of light the strengths of oral history and hold it time (Yeh, 2009), for example, or relate envi- up as an innovative example of using indigen- ronmental understandings in metaphorical ous knowledge in pursuit of historical geogra- terms (Huntington and Watson, 2012). Mean- phies. In a different take on the Arctic, Bravo while, humanistic research among indigenous (2009) finds that indigenous peoples’ responses peoples can and often does produce understand- to climate change should be understood in rela- ings of climate and climate change that are tion to emerging notions of citizenship. Rather incompatible with statistical findings of climate than passive recipients of a crisis narrative science (Yeh, 2013). It would belittle the signif- amenable to outsider intervention, Bravo icance of human diversity to desire that native (2009) finds that indigenous peoples are politi- ways of knowing and experiencing nature vali- cally engaged actors confronting their chal- date or somehow fit into western science, and lenges head on (see also Orlove et al., 2011). yet these different ways of knowing, thinking Sustained humanistic and geographical research about, and experiencing the world can and among the In˜upiat people of Arctic Alaska by should contribute to policy formulations, espe- Sakakibara (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011a, 2011b) cially those addressing climate change (see reveals how climate and associated environ- Green and Raygorodetsky, 2010). mental changes impact both whaling and the cultural practices associated with the annual whaling cycle, the year-round material and cul- III Ideas and meanings of climate tural activities that prepare for the annual hunts. Geographers and others have long written about But above all Sakakibara’s work shows how the the origins of ideas about weather, climate and In˜upiat remember, cope with, narrate, and climate change, and their contemporaneous respond to climatic and environmental changes meanings in different spatial-temporal and through culturally specific activities such as social contexts (e.g. Fleming, 1998; Glacken, storytelling, dancing and drumming, political 1967; Golinski, 2007; Kenny, 1995; Living- engagement, and the purposeful revitalization stone, 1994, 1999, 2002). Recent research of traditions associated with being ‘the people builds upon this base and broadens locales, of the whales’. Collectively, her research tells methods, and social contexts, and often makes a tale of cultural resiliency, but also of a vibrant a more explicit reference to contemporary nar- humanity coping with an uncertain future. What ratives about climate change. Two recent works all these indigenous and ethnographic studies use literature to understand the meanings asso- implicitly reveal is that present activities ciated with climatic events. Hulme (2012) responding to the impacts of climate change are explores three different ways in which a single steeped in knowledge of past geographies (see meteorological event – a heatwave in the county also DeSilvey et al., 2011). of Norfolk, England, in July of 1900 – is

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 481 interpreted. He compares L.P. Hartley’s novel adoption and diffusion of Humboldtian science, The Go Between (1953) with the world of late Cushman argues, the new and dominant idea of Victorian Norfolk and with the scientific world climate was cleansed of the qualitative and chor- of climate sciences today. By showing the differ- ographical properties it once held. This was even ent meanings associated with each epistemic true for descriptively inclined disciples of Hum- world, Hulme reveals how elusive a common boldt whose own observations may have interpretation about a single event can be in prac- revealed something different, but who wanted tice. His work problematizes the assumption that to be associated with Humboldtian science. For a single meaning can ever be associated with their part, Jankovic´ and Hebbert (2012) examine future climatic events. The relationship between the origin of the idea of the ‘’, meaning, literature, and past climatic events is and argue that this pervasive form of anthropo- also explored in the work of Griffiths and Salis- genic climate change has been marginalized in bury (2013). Their paper analyzes the poetry of climate change research. Built environments Guto’r Glyn, a leading Welsh poet of the medi- such as cities affect the scale at which climate eval period, to gauge medieval Welsh society’s is both experienced and modified by human perceptions of fluvial environments and how activities. Although city planners began to con- these perceptions influenced different cultural sider urban microclimatologies in the 1950s, the uses of river, wetland, and flood environments. idea has only recently caught the attention of the The interpretative breadth and methodological larger climate change research community. scope of their project are truly broad. Guto’s Following on the work of Harrison (1997) and poems of compassion showcase innovative uses Kenny (1995), among others, Adamson (2012) of fluvial landscapes, while culturally resonant seeks to reveal everyday experiences of weather toponyms constitute his writings and influence and climate in western India in the 1820s through Welsh poets even today. More interesting still, the examination of two colonial diaries. The however, is how Griffiths and Salisbury argue colonial discourse about tropical climates at this that, by revealing a society-nature relationship time suggested that climate presented a barrier to in the past in this way, future climatic floodplain European colonization, but also justified colonial impacts and adaptive strategies could be inferred. rule. But these discourses were undergoing revi- Cushman (2011) explores the politics of Hum- sion in large part due to James Johnson’s influen- boldtian science by retracing the explorer’s intel- tial book The Influence of Tropical Climates on lectual influences in and his practices in European Constitutions (first published in 1813 South America. Although the idea that human but reprinted and expanded several times there- , such as forest clearing for , after; Johnson, 1826). Johnson’s study argued was capable of causing large-scale climatic that, if Europeans took sensible and appropriate change pre-dates Humboldt, Cushman argues precautions, then the tropics posed no barrier to that Humboldt and his disciples popularized the settlement or colonization. What Adamson finds idea and gave it political heft. At the heart of is that: Cushman’s study is the way ‘Humboldtian cli- matology sometimes wilfully marginalized or For the British to be inherently superior, it held ignored other competing explanations for phe- that they must also be inherently ‘different’. This nomena’, including natural climatic cycles precipitated a hardening of attitudes regarding cli- (Cushman, 2011: 23). Cushman argues that matic determinism: climate could no longer be Humboldt’s anti-colonial views led him to fit derived as a cause of racial variability, as this observations into a declensionist narrative, even implied that all races were essentially identical. along the arid Pacific of Peru. Through the (Adamson, 2012: 145)

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 482 Progress in Human Geography 38(3)

Adamson thus seeks to scrutinize the diaries of a between its climate and healthfulness was colonial governor and the wife of a Chief Justice sealed. to see how their contents either deviate from or At a fundamental level, ideas about, and nar- reflect these broader colonial discourses. He ratives ascribing meanings to, climate and cli- finds that Hippocratic notions about the effects mate change are contested. Knowledge of climate on health are largely intact, but that production about climate is rife with conflict, the need to project ‘racial’ superiority in the dissent and counter-narratives, and ongoing his- face of expanding British territorial acquisi- torical and geographical research consistently tions – including the movement toward direct demonstrates this. In an interesting study that British rule in India – inspired Britons to miti- excavates an anonymous letter published in the gate the effects of tropical climate through tem- Philosophical Transactions in 1676, Vogel perance, altitudinal change, and mental exercise (2011) shows that contemporaneous notions of in order to maintain their perceived moral and anthropogenic climate change were subject to mental superiority (see also Johnson, 1826; debate and that the concept of climate was Livingstone, 2002). In short, a political context linked to of landscape change and colo- supporting the development of a discourse of nialism. During early English settlement in racial superiority mutually constituted ideas North America, settlers and their backers cre- about climate, as was evident in the writings ated a dominant discourse maintaining that of two very different individuals. Carey also the taming of savage nature through forest clear- examines colonial and Hippocratic notions of ing and cultivation inevitably moderated cli- climate in the Caribbean, as well as the impacts mate for the better (see also Golinski, 2008). of Johnson’s Influence of Tropical Climates, but The narrative of ‘amelioration through steward- carries the changing ideas forward to the mid- ship’ was challenged by a letter writer from 20th century to reveal ‘how science, medicine, Dublin, who pointed out that Ireland’s weather and tourism changed tropical weather from had also become more moderate despite a deadly to healthy’ (Carey, 2011: 129). Carey decrease in population and a subsequent decline finds that even through the 18th century there in agriculture (Vogel, 2011: 112). Ireland’s was not universal consensus that tropical cli- colonial experience is thereby offered as a coun- mates were unhealthy for Europeans – certainly ter-example to a discourse of ‘commodious every visitor to Barbados learns that George and weather’, with its twin meaning of healthy and Lawrence Washington travelled to the island in useful for commodity production – a narrative 1751 so that the latter could recover from a pul- both justifying and sustaining the colonial enter- monary condition by taking in the healthy prise (p. 116). The study also reminds us that tropical climes. Instead, Carey finds that inter- anthropogenic climate change was once inter- pretations about landscape and social conditions preted as morally correct and inherently good. invariably influenced how writers described the Coen (2011) examines the interesting conti- healthfulness of an island’s climate. By the late nental-imperial context of mountain clima- 19th century physicians and scientists began to tology in Tyrol and western Turkestan. The provide major breakthroughs about disease comparative connection between the two regions transmission which changed perceptions about was made by the Austrian and the tropics in general and the Caribbean in par- mountaineer Heinrich von Flicker (1881– ticular (see also Jankovic´, 2010; McNeill, 2010: 1957). At the heart of Coen’s argument is that Chapter 8; Sutter, 2007). With the rise of tour- the globalization of knowledge did not necessa- ism between 1850 and 1950, Caribbean climate rily mean scaling up from the periphery to the became a commodity and the association metropole (a la Humboldt), but horizontally

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 483 across scales, which made causal connections scientific audiences – take us away from the more continuous and intuitive (for the imperial realm of climate ideas and discourses to the context of Turkestan, see also Withers, 2013). impacts of both cumulative and cyclical cli- The role of fieldwork in establishing a specific matic changes on historical geographies. epistemic community forms the backbone of Scholars of Latin America have long consid- two publications by So¨rlin (2009, 2011). So¨r- ered the impact of climate on social, biophysi- lin’s studies examine the mid-20th-century cal, and historical developments, whether the work of Swedish glaciologist Hans Ahlmann, concern is colonial Mexico (Endfield, 2008), and how his diligent fieldwork measuring gla- the Andes (Braun and Bezada, 2013; Carey, cier melting in the Arctic helped to establish the 2010; Carey et al., 2012; Mark et al., 2010), or authority of his of ‘polar warming’. But extreme, cyclical, or El Nin˜o events in the Car- Ahlmann’s theory did not hold up against work ibbean (Carey, 2011; Gamble et al., 2010; by Stockholm then developing McNeill, 2010; Mulcahy; 2006). As with the around research by Carl-Gustaf Rossby. Ross- sweeping study of McNeill (2010; see notice by’s theory posited that heat-trapping green- of this work in Offen, 2012), Johnson’s (2011) house gases explained climate change, and this study Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the view ascended in scientific circles in direct pro- Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution demon- portion to the institutional support that it received strates far-ranging causal relationships between (see also Bohn, 2011). The narratives investi- social and climatic processes. Whether it was gated by So¨rlin show ‘the importance of broad prolonged droughts associated with El Nin˜o, science politics as well as local and disciplinary or floods and high linked to La Nin˜a methods, traditions, and institutional trajectories cycles, agricultural and livestock production in shaping attitudes among scientists to climate often declined in the Caribbean. If foodstuffs change’ (So¨rlin, 2009: 237; see also Do¨rries, could not be imported, as was often the case, 2011). Likewise, Howkins (2011) finds that hunger and political instability generally fol- changing perceptions about climate change since lowed. Relying on a range of archival and scien- 1958 had an important impact on research agen- tific sources, Johnson provides an excellent das in and politics dealing with . The example of how climate cycles in Spanish, result has been a consolidation of political power French, and English Caribbean colonies over the continent by the ‘insider’ nations of the impacted political processes and historical geo- Antarctic Treaty System signed in 1961. Again, graphies there in the second half of the 18th cen- science and politics are linked empirically to the tury. Gamble et al. (2010) find that Jamaican interpretation of climate and climate change farmers are concerned about the increasing (Do¨rries, 2011; Howkins, 2011). drought occurrence in St Elizabeth Parish, espe- cially since 1990, and that this confirms climatic records. In their historical study of climate IV Climate-society geographies change and adaptation in the Peru’s Cordillera Although the works discussed above illustrate Blanca, Carey et al. (2012) find that successful climate-society geographies, the studies technological mitigation of tunnels and flood- grouped in this section seek to illustrate how gates in the late 20th century created unintended past climate changes influenced specific his- consequences, as new stakeholders began to torical and geographical developments in dis- struggle over the control of water in ways previ- tinct regions. These recent works – which are ously not possible. only a small sample of those published in myr- In a study linking climate and colonialism iad journals, including those oriented toward in western India (1840–1880), Hazareesingh

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 484 Progress in Human Geography 38(3)

(2012) examines the transplantation of Ameri- Sousa et al. (2010) analyze toponyms as evi- can cotton in Dharwar. He finds that the climate dence of climatic events in a wetland environ- of Dharwar was not what British authorities had ment of southwestern Spain. Their quantitative constructed it to be, and that people preferred study finds a reduction in hydronyms, revealing their more adapted varieties of cotton in addi- recent anthropogenic desiccation of the wet- tion to staple food crops. By showing how cli- lands of the Don˜ana Natural Park, but also mate impacted the social and technological broader landscape changes since the Little Ice processes in Dharwar, Hazareesingh reveals the Age. They suggest that their method of topony- fragility of colonial power in western India. mic reconstruction can be used as environmen- Gergis et al. (2010) examine how weather and tal indicators of climate change elsewhere in the climatic factors influenced European settlement world. For their part, Tiki et al. (2013) use an of Australia between 1788 and 1793. They ‘indigenous time-related framework’ to recon- chose these dates because particularly wet and struct the impact of disasters associated with cli- cool weather existed between 1788 and 1790, matic events on the ancient tula well systems in which coincided with a La Nin˜a cycle, while southern Ethiopia from 1560 to 1950. Providing drought conditions took hold during the El Nin˜o water to people and livestock, tula well systems cycle of 1791–1793. In so doing, they compare have been at the center of land and life in the textual sources with paleoclimatic records to region for over 500 years. One of the things that reveal how water scarcity profoundly shaped make this study interesting is that known cli- the development of Australian society. Morgan matic events are used as proxy data to corrobo- (2011) likewise explores the impact of climate rate social memories anchored in an oral and aridity in southwestern Australia, but in the recording tradition, not the other way around. second half of the 20th century. Climate change and Zhou tribal relocations in early Chinese his- tory is the subject of a paper by Huang and Su V Conclusion (2009). Nomadic invasions along the middle As I write this paper, news outlets are atwitter reaches of the Yellow River between 3500 and with notice that the earth’s atmosphere reached 2200 BP forced Zhou people to relocate, an average daily level of dioxide equal to impacting successive dynasties. Their study 400 parts per million, the highest amount known argues that climate instability likely instigated over the last three million years. While many environmental change in the Loess Plateau and commentators are lining up to tell us what this spawned the invasions that led to subsequent means for global climate change and what steps Zhou migrations. Meanwhile, Xiao et al. need to be taken now to avert devastating conse- (2013) find that climate change is a likely factor quences, studies show that the public is not well in the decline of an important autumn hunting informed about nor connected to the issue. ritual in Mulan, north China. The Mulan Quix- Although Boykoff and Boykoff (2007) blame ian flourished during the first hundred years of this reality on the bias of mass media trying to the Qing dynasty (1683–1820) but declined be ‘balanced’ in their coverage, the case could thereafter. The hunt was an important imperial be made that neither scientific narratives nor activity that helped to cement the alliance doom-and-gloom scenarios provide culturally between the Manchus and the Mongols. Using salient handles that people can readily grasp. historical documents, the authors argue that Some of the research presented here suggests many political decisions made by the Qing court that people and communities are or can be in the late 18th and early 19th centuries reflect engaged with weather and climate issues if dis- an adaptation to climate change. cussions are rooted in place, presented in an

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 485 appropriate language, and/or conceptually References linked to meanings that resonate culturally with Adamson GCD (2012) ‘The languor of the hot weather’: people at local or community levels. Yet what Everyday perspectives on weather and climate in colo- many of the papers discussed herein suggest is nial Bombay, 1819–1828. Journal of Historical Geo- that just the opposite is occurring, that the graphy 38: 143–154. notion of climate is becoming increasingly both Aporta C and MacDonald J (2011) An elder on sea ice: An a physical and social process, and specifically a interview with Aipilik Inuksuk of Igloolik, Nunavut. discourse mobilized to frame political issues The Canadian Geographer 55: 32–35. (Hulme, 2009). Perhaps if we temper the notion Aporta C, Taylor DRF, and Laidler GJ (2011) Geographies of climate as statistical index with its older, rela- of Inuit sea ice use: Introduction to special issue. The Canadian Geographer 55: 1–5. tional, experiential, chorological, and descrip- Aspinall R (2010) Geographical perspectives on climate tive meanings, we might reinvigorate public change. Introduction to special issue. Annals of the discussions of climate and climate change Association of American Geographers 100: 715–718. through humanistic approaches derived from Barnett J (2010) Adapting to climate change: Three key distinct historical and geographical contexts. challenges for research and policy – an editorial essay. Most of the papers here confirm that the mean- WIREs Climate Change 1: 314–317. ing of climate or climate change is not, or should Birkenholtz T (2012) Network political ecology: Method not, be the exclusive purview of science and its and theory in climate change vulnerability and adapta- practitioners. Science is always interpreted and tion research. Progress in Human Geography 36: therefore falls into the realm of the social, cul- 295–315. tural, and political. The notion that ‘better sci- Bohn M (2011) Concentrating on CO2: The Scandinavian ence’ leads to better policy would seem to and Arctic measurements. Osiris 26: 165–179. Boykoff MT and Boykoff JM (2007) Climate change and ignore this fact. Just as climate and climate journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media change need to be studied with scientific meth- coverage. Geoforum 38: 1190–1204. ods, so too should social sciences and the huma- Brace C and Geoghegan H (2011) Human geographies of nities be tapped. As this review shows, even the climate change: Landscape, temporality, and lay research utilizing scientific approaches to under- knowledges. Progress in Human Geography 35: stand climate change in the past reveal how 284–302. people – acting through their cultural beliefs, Braun C and Bezada M (2013) The history and disappear- political institutions, and technical capabilities – ance of in Venezuela. Journal of Latin Ameri- respond to climate and changing social and phys- can Geography 12: 85–124. ical phenomena. Historical geographers will Bravo MT (2009) Voices from the sea ice: The reception of surely continue to engage with the ideas and climate impact narratives. Journal of Historical Geo- meanings associated with climate and climate graphy 35: 256–278. Butzer KW (2012) Collapse, environment, and society. change, but it will be interesting to see how their Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences work will adopt and respond to the dominant dis- 109: 3632–3639. cursive inclinations, changing institutional pro- Butzer KW and Endfield GH (2012) Critical perspectives clivities and constraints, and new conditions on on historical collapse. Proceedings of the National the ground. One thing is certain, climate matters Academy of Sciences 109: 3628–3631. and will continue to matter in multiple ways. Carey M (2010) In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Cli- mate Change and Andean Society. Oxford: Oxford Uni- Acknowledgements versity Press. An earlier draft of this paper was improved by com- Carey M (2011) Inventing Caribbean climates: How sci- ments made by Randy Peppler, Scott Greene, Laurel ence, medicine, and tourism changed tropical weather Smith, Chris Philo, and Rick Thomas. from deadly to healthy. Osiris 26: 129–141.

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 486 Progress in Human Geography 38(3)

Carey M (2012) Climate and history: A critical review of Endfield GH and Morris C (2012c) ‘Well weather is not a and climate change historiogra- girl thing is it?’: Contemporary amateur meteorology, phy. WIREs Climate Change 3: 233–249. gender relations and the shaping of domestic masculi- Carey M, French A, and O’Brien E (2012) Unintended nity. Social and 12: 233–253. effects of technology on climate change adaptation: Fleming JR (1998) Historical Perspectives on Climate An historical analysis of water conflicts below Andean Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Glaciers. Journal of Historical Geography 38: 181–191. Fleming JR (2006) Global climate change and human Chakrabarty D (2009) The climate of history: Four theses. agency: Inadvertent influence and ‘Archimedean’ Critical Inquiry 35: 197–222. interventions. In: Fleming JR, Jankovic´V, and Coen Coen DR (2011) Imperial climatographies from Tyrol to DR (eds) Intimate Universality: Local and Global Turkestan. Osiris 26: 45–65. Themes in the History of Weather and Climate. Saga- Crate SA (2011) Climate and culture: Anthropology in the more Beach, MA: Science History Publications, era of contemporary climate change. Annual Review of 223–248. Anthropology 40: 175–194. Fleming JR (2010) Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History Cupples J (2012) Wild globalization: The biopolitics of of Weather and Climate Control. New York: Columbia climate change and global capitalism on Nicaragua’s University Press. Mosquito Coast. Antipode 44: 10–30. Fleming JR and Jankovic´V (2011) Introduction: Revisit- Cushman GT (2011) Humboldtian science, Creole meteor- ing Klima. Osiris 26: 1–15. ology, and the discovery of human-caused climate Fleming JR, Jankovic´ V, and Coen DR (2006) Intimate change in South America. Osiris 26: 16–44. Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History Daniels S and Endfield GH (2009) Narratives of climate of Weather and Climate. Sagamore Beach, MA: Sci- change: Introduction. Journal of Historical Geography ence History Publications. 35: 215–222. Gamble D, Campbell D, Allen T, et al. (2010) Climate DeSilvey C (2012) Making sense of transience: An antici- change, drought, and Jamaican agriculture: Local patory history. Cultural Geographies 19: 31–54. knowledge and the climate record. Annals of the Asso- DeSilvey C, Naylor S, and Sackett C (2011) Anticipatory ciation of American Geographers 100: 880–893. History. Axminster: Uniformbooks. Geoghegan H and Leyson C (2012) On climate change and Dinero SC (2013) Indigenous perspectives of climate cultural geography: farming on the Lizard Peninsula, change and its effects upon subsistence activities in the Cornwall, UK. Climatic Change 113: 55–66. Arctic: The case of the Nets’aii Gwich’in. GeoJournal Gergis J, Garden D, and Fenby C (2010) The influence of 78: 117–137. climate on the first European settlement of Australia: A Do¨rries M (2011) The politics of atmospheric sciences: comparison of weather journals, documentary data and ‘Nuclear ’ and global climate change. Osiris paleoclimate records, 1788–1793. Environmental His- 26: 198–223. tory 15: 485–507. Dull RA, Nevle RJ, Woods WI, et al. (2010) The Colum- Glacken CJ (1967) Traces on the Rhodian : Nature bian encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt land use and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times change, fire, and greenhouse forcing. Annals of the to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: Association of American Geographers 100: 755–771. University of California Press. Endfield GH (2008) Climate and Society in Colonial Mex- Golinski J (2007) British Weather and the Climate of ico: A Study in Vulnerability. Oxford: Blackwell. Enlightenment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Endfield G (2011) Reculturing and particularizing climate Press. discourses: Weather, identity, and the work of Gordon Golinski J (2008) American climate and the civilization of Manley. Osiris 26: 142–162. nature. In: Delbourgo J and Dew N (eds) Science and Endfield G and Morris C (2012a) Cultural spaces of cli- Empire in the Atlantic World. New York: Routledge, mate. Climatic Change 113: 1–4. 153–174. Endfield G and Morris C (2012b) Exploring the role of the Green D and Raygorodetsky G (2010) Indigenous knowl- amateur in the production and circulation of meteorolo- edge of a changing climate. Introduction to special gical knowledge. Climatic Change 113: 69–89. issue. Climatic Change 100: 239–242.

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 487

Griffiths HM and Salisbury E (2013) ‘The tears I shed were law in an era of rapid climate change. Wicazo Sa Noah’s flood’: Medieval genre, floods and the fluvial Review 27: 49–73. landscape in the poetry of Guto’r Glyn. Journal of His- Hvistendahl M (2012) Roots of empire: A climate history torical Geography 40: 94–104. project in Mongolia is charting the unexpected condi- Hamblyn R (2009) The whistleblower and the canary: tions that may have propelled the rise of Genghis Khan. Rhetorical constructions of climate change. Journal Science 337: 1596–1599. of Historical Geography 35: 223–236. Jankovic´V (2010) Confronting the Climate: British Airs Harrison M (1997) Climates and Constitutions: Health, and the Making of Environmental Medicine. Basing- Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India stoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 1600–1850. New York: Oxford University Press. Jankovic´V and Barboza C (2009) Weather, Local Knowl- Hazareesingh S (2012) Cotton, climate and colonialism in edge and Everyday Life: Issues in Integrated Climate Dharwar, western India, 1840–1880. Journal of Histor- Studies. Rio de Janeiro: MAST. ical Geography 38: 1–17. Jankovic´V and Hebbert M (2012) Hidden climate change – Head L (2010) Cultural ecology: Adaptation – retrofitting a urban meteorology and the scales of real weather. Cli- concept? Progress in Human Geography 34: 234–242. matic Change 113: 23–33. Head L and Gibson C (2012) Becoming differently mod- Johnson J (1826) The Influence of Tropical Climates on ern: Geographic contributions to a generative climate European Constitutions: Being a Treatise on the Prin- politics. Progress in Human Geography 36: 699–714. cipal Diseases Incidental to Europeans in the East and Head L, Atchison J, Gates A, et al. (2011) A fine-grained West Indies, Mediterranean, and Coast of Africa. New study of the experience of drought, risk and climate York: E. Duyckinck, G. Long. change among Australian wheat farming households. Johnson S (2011) Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and Annals of the Association of American Geographers the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution. Chapel 101: 1089–1108. Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Heymann M (2010) The evolution of climate ideas and Kenny JT (1995) Climate, race, and imperial authority: knowledge. WIREs Climate Change 1: 581–597. The symbolic landscape of the British hill station in Howe JP (2011) History and climate: A road map to huma- India. Annals of the Association of American Geogra- nistic scholarship on climate change. Climatic Change phers 85: 694–714. 105: 357–363. Leduc TB (2011) Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Howkins A (2011) Melting empires? Climate change and Western Dialogues with a Warming North. Ontario: politics in Antarctica since the International Geophysi- University of Ottawa Press. cal Year. Osiris 26: 180–197. Liverman DM (2009) Conventions of climate change: Con- Huang CC and Su H (2009) Climate change and Zhou relo- structions of danger and the dispossession of the atmo- cations in early Chinese history. Journal of Historical sphere. Journal of Historical Geography 35: 279–296. Geography 35: 297–310. Livingstone DN (1994) Climate’s moral economy: Sci- Hulme M (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate ence, race and place in post-Darwinian British and Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and American geography. In: Godlewska A and Smith N Opportunity. New York: Cambridge University Press. (eds) Geography and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge Hulme M (2011) Reducing the future to climate: A story of University Press, 132–154. climate determinism and reductionism. Osiris 26: Livingstone DN (1999) Tropical climate and moral 245–266. hygiene: The anatomy of a Victorian debate. British Hulme M (2012) ‘Telling a different tale’: Literary, histor- Journal for the History of Science 32: 93–110. ical and meteorological readings of a Norfolk heat- Livingstone DN (2002) Race, space and moral climatol- wave. Climatic Change 113: 5–21. ogy: Notes toward a genealogy. Journal of Historical Hulme M, Dessai S, Lorenzoni I, et al. (2009) Unstable cli- Geography 28: 159–180. mates: Exploring the statistical and social constructions Livingstone DN (2012) Reflections on the cultural spaces of ‘normal’ climate. Geoforum 40: 197–206. of climate. Climatic Change 113: 91–93. Huntington OH and Watson A (2012) Interdisciplinarity, Lorimer J (2012) Multinatural geographies for the Anthro- native resilience, and how the riddles can teach wildlife pocene. Progress in Human Geography 36: 593–612.

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 488 Progress in Human Geography 38(3)

McNeill JR (2010) Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in Sabin P (2010) ‘The ultimate environmental dilemma’: the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914. Cambridge: Cam- Making a place for historians in the climate change and bridge University Press. energy debates. 15: 76–93. Mark B, Bury J, McKenzie J, et al. (2010) Climate change Sakakibara C (2008) ‘Our home is drowning’: In˜upiat and tropical Andean recession: Evaluating storytelling and climate change in Point Hope, Alaska. hydrologic changes and livelihood vulnerability in the The Geographical Review 98: 456–475. Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Annals of the Association of Sakakibara C (2009) ‘No whale, no music’: In˜upiaq drum- American Geographers 100: 794–805. ming and global warming. Polar Record 45: 1–15. Morgan RA (2011) Diagnosing the dry: Historical case Sakakibara C (2010) Kiavallakkikput agviq_ (Into the whal- notes from southwest Western Australia, 1945–2007. ing cycle): Cetaceousness and climate change among Osiris 26: 89–108. the In˜upiat of Arctic Alaska. Annals of the Association Mulcahy M (2006) Hurricanes and Society in the British of American Geographers 100: 1003–1012. Greater Caribbean, 1624–1783. Baltimore, MD: Johns Sakakibara C (2011a) Whale tales: People of the whales Hopkins University Press. and climate change in the Azores. Focus on Geography Nevle RJ, Bird DK, Ruddiman WF, et al. (2011) Neotropi- 54: 75–90. cal human–landscape interactions, fire, and atmospheric Sakakibara C (2011b) Climate change and cultural sur- CO2 during European conquest. The Holocene 21: vival in the Arctic: Muktuk politics and the people of 853–864. the whales. Weather, Climate and Society 3: 76–89. Offen K (2012) Historical geography I: Vital traditions. Salick J and Ross N (2009) Traditional peoples and climate Progress in Human Geography 36: 527–540. change. Introduction to special issue. Global Environ- Offen K (2013) Historical geography II: Digital imagi- mental Change 19: 137–139. nations. Progress in Human Geography 37(4): Sa´nchez-Corte´s MS and Lazos Chavero E (2011) Indigen- 564–577. ous perception of changes in climate variability and its O’Neill SJ, Hulme M, Turnpenny J, et al. (2010) Disci- relationship with agriculture in a Zoque community of plines, geography, and gender in the framing of climate Chiapas, Mexico. Climatic Change 107: 363–389. change. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Soci- Sayre NF (2012) The politics of the Anthropogenic. ety 91: 997–1002. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 57–70. Orlove B, Roncoli C, Kabugo M, et al. (2010) Indigenous So¨rlin S (2009) Narratives and counter-narratives of cli- climate knowledge in southern Uganda: The multiple mate change: North Atlantic and meteorol- components of a dynamic regional system. Climatic ogy, c.1930–1955. Journal of Historical Geography Change 100: 243–265. 35: 237–255. Orlove B, Taddei R, Podesta´G, et al. (2011) Environmen- So¨rlin S (2011) The anxieties of a science diplomat: Field tal citizenship in Latin America: Climate, intermediate coproduction of climate knowledge and the rise and fall organizations, and political subjects. Latin American of Hans Ahlmann’s ‘Polar Warming’. Osiris 26: 66–88. Research Review 46: 115–140. Sousa A, Garcı´a-Murillo P, Sahin S, et al. (2010) Wetland Parenti C (2011) Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the place names as indicators of manifestations of recent New Geography of Violence. New York: Verso. climate change in SW Spain (Don˜ana Natural Park). Parker A and Grossman Z (2012) Asserting Native Climatic Change 100: 525–557. Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Sutter PS (2007) Nature’s agents or agents of empire? Climate Crisis. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State Univer- Entomological workers and environmental change dur- sity Press. ing the construction of the Panama Canal. Isis 98: Peppler RA (2010) ‘Old Indian ways’ of predicting the 724–754. weather: Senator Robert S. Kerr and the winter predic- Tiki W, Oba G, and Tvedt T (2013) An indigenous time- tions of 1950–51 and 1951–52. Weather, Climate and related framework for reconstructing the impact of disas- Society 2: 200–209. ters on ancient water systems in southern Ethiopia, Radcliffe S, Watson E, Simmons I, et al. (2010) Environ- 1560–1950. Journal of Historical Geography 41: 33–43. mentalist thinking and/in geography. Progress in Ulloa A (2011) Perspectivas culturales del clima. Bogota´: Human Geography 34: 98–116. Universidad Nacional de Colombia-ILSA.

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 Offen 489

Vogel B (2011) The letter from Dublin: Climate change, 1798–c.1838. Journal of Historical Geography 39: colonialism, and the Royal Society in the seventeenth 3–18. century. Osiris 26: 111–128. Xiao LB, Fang X, and Zhang Y (2013) Climatic impacts on Wainwright J (2010) Climate change, capitalism, and the the rise and decline of ‘Mulan Qiuxian’ and ‘Chengde challenge of transdisciplinarity. Annals of the Associa- Bishu’ in North China, 1683–1820. Journal of Histori- tion of American Geographers 100: 983–991. cal Geography 39: 19–28. Watson A and Huntington OH (2008) They’re here – I can Yeh ET (2009) From wasteland to wetland? Nature and feel them: The epistemic spaces of indigenous and nation in China’s Tibet. Environmental History 14: western knowledges. Social and Cultural Geography 103–137. 9: 257–281. Yeh ET (2013) Epistemological quandaries in explaining Withers CWJ (2013) On Enlightenment’s margins: Geo- climate change in Tibet. Paper presented at the 2013 graphy, imperialism and mapping in Central Asia, c. AAG Annual Meeting, Los Angeles.

Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016