Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life Issues in Integrated Climate Studies Edited by Vladimir Jankovic and Christina Barboza Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life Issues in Integrated Climate Studies Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life Issues in Integrated Climate Studies Edited by Vladimir Jankovic and Christina Barboza MAST, Rio de Janeiro, 2009 Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life: Issues in Integrated Climate Studies. Vladimir Jankovic and Christina Barboza (Eds.) ©MAST 2009 Book and cover design by Felipe Cavalcanti Catalogação na fonte do Departamento Nacional do Livro Issues in Integrated Climate Studies Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), the Cultural Association of the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences Fellows (SAMAST), and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation of Support to Research in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) for their support to the ICHM “Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life” Conference, held in Rio de Janeiro, 26-30 May 2008. We would also like to thank the members of the organizing committees, namely Cornelia Lüdecke (ICHM President), James Fleming (ICHM past-President) anad Samuel Randalls (UCL), Alfredo Tolmasquim (Director of MAST), Priscila Faulhaber and José Antônio Queiroz. Luís Felipe Ferrão helped us with registration fees and ready money, while Ethel Handfas, Felipe Cavalcanti and Cecília Moura were invaluable in the production of printed materials. Finally, we would like to give a special thanks to Roseana Costa, the Conference secretary, who worked full time to create the most stimulating ambience for friendship and our scholarly reflections on the weather. 7 Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life Contents I. INTRODUCTION 8. Natural disaster and environmental coherence: The many lives of weather lessons from a storm flood and a hurricane Christina Barboza and Vladimir Jankovic Matthias Heymann II. THEMES AND APPROACHES IV. CULTURES OF CLIMATE 1. Weather, climate, and everyday life: social 9. Climate and the people of Brazil: science perspectives observations of nature and Netherlandish Steve Rayner colonization in America (1637-1645) Heloisa Meireles Gesteira 2. Manufacturing weather: climate change, indoors and out 10. Naturalizing culture: climate and culture in the Elizabeth Shove American South Mart Stewart 3. Fixing the sky: rain kings and climate engineers James Fleming 11. “If the Bard was weather-wise”: nineteenth- century British Weather Marilyn Gaull III. WEATHER, HISTORY AND EMERGENCY 4. Volcano eruptions, earth- & seaquakes, dry 12. UFOs or Weather: the 1952 “Invasions of fogs vs. Aristotle’s Meteorologica and the Bible, in Washington” the framework of the eighteenth-century science Teasel Muir-Harmony history Isabel Malaquias, Gaston R. Demarée, 13. Keeping meteorology masculine: the American Øyvind Nordli, Domingo González Lopo Meteorological Society’s response to television ‘weather girls’ in the 1950s 5. Confronting avalanches in the Alps in the late Roger Turner Middle Ages and early Modern Era Christian Rohr 14. Climate, scientific strategy and the political state: the Brazilian Space Program 6. Scientific meteorology and everyday life in Ana Lucia Villas-Bôas, Luiz Carlos Borges Brazil: the Rio-Apa shipwreck Christina Helena Barboza 15. The end of weather: outdoor garment industry and the quest for absolute comfort 7. What is a storm: severe weather and public life Vladimir Jankovic in Britain in January 1928 Anna Carlsson 8 Issues in Integrated Climate Studies V. WEATHER, SCIENCE AND HISTORY 16. Cloud-spotting, past and present 25. Weather dependent methods for observing Katharine Anderson the sky and reckoning time among the Kayapó of Gorotire, Brazil 17. Flying high and far: the impact of Márcio D’olne Campos, Tamar Bajgielman meteorological knowledge on the sport of Soaring Flight 26. Rain and drought: seasons in the Tristes Russel E. Lee Tropiques Heloisa Maria Bertol Domingues 18. “I always feel the foehn, even if it‘s not there”; the Bavarian foehn phenomenon in everyday life 27. The Farmer and the Weather Cornelia Lüdecke Frank Uekötter 19. Medical geography outlines a new cartography 28. The politics of uncertainty and the fate of for the medical knowledge: the Brazilian case forecasters: climate, risk, and blame in Northeast Flavio Edler Brazil Renzo Taddei 20. Why the weather? Doria Grimes 29. Creating an online archive of traditional weather prediction indicators: Notes from a round 21. Early water-level measurements and weather table discussion observations on Prussian gauging stations - Karen Pennesi examples from the Prussian Province Saxony (1817 - 1875) Matthias Deutsch, Karl-Heinz Pörtge VI. WEATHER AS LIVED 22. Working with potency: the role of weather in KhoeSan healing Christopher Low 23. Anthropology of weather and indigenous cosmology inscribed in ritual artifacts Priscila Faulhaber 24. The Tupinambá and Guarani contribution towards the understanding and control of weather Luiz Carlos Borges, Flávia Pedroza Lima 9 Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life I. INTRODUCTION 10 Issues in Integrated Climate Studies The Many Lives of Weather Vladimir Jankovic and Christina Barboza In May 2008 scholars from four continents gathered in Rio de Janeiro to explore past and present ideas about how weather, climate, and environmental change affect daily prac- tices and beliefs of people worldwide. During the four days of discussions in the superbly equipped National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) perched on the hills of Tijuca National Park, historians, sociologists and anthropologists of environmental knowledge engaged to unpack the seemingly mundane question about what it means to ‘live in the weather’. Presentations took place in an air-conditioned auditorium, and this fact added to the complications involved in thinking what constitutes weather sensibili- ties and whether weather could exist indoors. As the air temperature in the auditorium remained around 23 degrees Celsius, some complained of feeling too cold under artifi- cial air currents, while others thought that the room be even cooler. The rest didn’t seem to mind either way. Clearly such reactions reflected differences in expectations about environmental comfort: even inside, we continued to speak meteorologically and not only out of academic interest. Meanwhile, we were all delighted by the ambience of the cloud forest jungle and the beaches of Rio, where most of us stayed. In the end, IMPA proved to be something of a laboratory for testing our ideas about personal comfort and a site in which it seemed natural to explore whether individual preferences trickled up to larger scales. Are societies climatologically idiosyncratic as well? Despite recent debates on the future of global climate, atmospheric processes are not new to social thought. Climate and weather have been recurrent themes in world his- tory despite the alleged uniqueness of our current concerns. It is widely recognized that klima had been central to questions about national character, legal theory, health, agricul- ture, trade, and colonialism. But some basic questions remain. How could ‘climate’ ever come to shape – as it does today – global decision making, humanitarian reform, and technological change? How exactly does it feature in social theory, political philosophy or economic policy? What is the relationship between environmental contingency and human rationality if, as an eighteenth-century journalist opined, “[w]e cannot be made better men [sic] or better Christians by believing that our passions and our religion itself are the effect of climate.” (1) Furthermore, it is increasingly important to understand how atmospheric realities either stipulate or stimulate practice and provide social identity and expectations in a changing environment. Equally relevant is to look at what might be called ‘elementary units’ of engagement with the weather as in task scheduling, hygiene, and leisure activities. In relation to such realms, it also remains to be seen whether me- teorological expertise can provide sufficient information for running life on daily basis. Perhaps the local climate is always already embedded in praxis and for that reason inac- cessible, at some level, for analysis? There have been only limited attempts to interrogate these issues: the meeting in Rio 11 Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life was an occasion to redress this lacuna. The International Commission on History of Meteorology and the Brazilian Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences invited schol- ars from across social sciences to reflect on the ways in which we could see weather as lived rather than theorized. Our hope was for a meeting that would launch a longitudinal and global approach to weather experiences as they emerge (or hide) in routines, rituals, and everyday practices. Such hopes were not let down. The response from scholars was overwhelming, the variety of themes extraordinary and the timetable allowed for plenty of interaction. As editors, we are fortunate that the present collection demonstrates that speaking about the weather – rather than being a banal conversational trope – is really about social reality: about family, city, region, or nation as well as about our religious, ethnic, professional and otherwise ‘tribal’ identities. But does weather even matter in a world in which advanced technologies in housing, transportation and weather prediction