The Anthropology of Climate Change: An Historical Reader

Climate perturbation and change is a topic of intense interest but the current conversation rarely moves beyond an examination of the contemporary situation. In doing so, it ignores insights from millennia of scholarly attention to the relationship between climate and society and doesn’t take full advantage of anthropological work on the subject. This timely anthology brings together the most important classical works and contemporary scholarship for a complete historical anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change.

The essays in this volume study the historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climatic perturbation and change; the impact and response  at the local level; the impact on global debates  from North-South post-colonial histories; and the social dimensions of  climate science.  They encompass such topics as  environmental determinism, climatic events as social catalysts, climatic disasters and societal collapse, and the construction and circulation of knowledge about climate.  An ideal text for courses in climate change, human/cultural ecology, environmental anthropology and archaeology, disaster studies, science and technology studies, history of science, and environmental sciences, this book not only informs current debates but also demonstrates that  the relationship between climate and society has preoccupied the human mind for as long as records have been kept.