Linda H. Connor

Anthropos, in the sense of species as well as cultures and ethics, locates humans as part of much larger orders of existence – fundamental when thinking about climate change. This book offers a new way of exploring the significance of locality and lives in the epoch of the Anthropocene, a time when humans confront the limits of our control over nature. Many scholars now write about the ethics, policies and politics of climate change, focussing on global processes and effects. The book’s innovative approach to cross-cultural comparison and a regionally based study explores people’s experiences of environmental change and the meaning of climate change for diverse human worlds in a changing biosphere. The main study site is the Hunter Valley in southeast Australia: an ecological region defined by the Hunter River catchment; a dwelling place for many generations of people; and a key location for transnational corporations focussed on the mining, burning and export of black coal. Abundant fossil fuel reserves tie Hunter people and places to the Asia Pacific – the engine room of global economic growth in the twenty-first century and the largest user of the planet’s natural resources. The book analyses the nexus of place and perceptions, political economy and social organisation in situations where environmental changes are radically transforming collective worlds. Based on an anthropological approach informed by other ways of thinking about environment-people relationships, this book analyses the social and cultural dimensions of climate change holistically. Each chapter links the large scales of species and planet with small places, commodity chains, local actions, myths and values, as well as the mingled strands of dystopian imaginings and strivings for recuperative renewal in an era of transition.

Planet, people and places

Climate Change and Anthropos

Jonathan Paul Marshall

Climate change and ecological instability have the potential to disrupt human societies and their futures. Cultural, social and ethical life in all societies is directed towards a future that can never be observed, and never be directly acted upon, and yet is always interacting with us. Thinking and acting towards the future involves efforts of imagination that are linked to our sense of being in the world and the ecological pressures we experience. The three key ideas of this book – ecologies, ontologies and mythologies – help us understand the ways people in many different societies attempt to predict and shape their futures. Each chapter places a different emphasis on the linked domains of environmental change, embodied experience, myth and fantasy, politics, technology and intellectual reflection, in relation to imagined futures. The diverse geographic scope of the chapters includes rural Nepal, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Sweden, coastal Scotland, North America, and remote, rural and urban Australia. This book will appeal to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, cultural studies, psychology and politics.

Linda H. Connor

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