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Anthropological contributions
to the study of climate: past,
present, future
Kirsten Hastrup∗

In the world of climate science there is an increasing demand for contributions

from the social sciences, given that the current processes of climate change
deeply affect societies. This article is a response to this call, with specific focus
on past and potential contributions from anthropology, as we have known it
from the 19th century onwards. It is shown how through the ages, different
anthropological interests have shaped distinct perspectives on the entanglement
of society and nature. It is argued that the present global concerns about climate
change necessitate a refashioning of anthropology, and make it expedient to pay
attention to the emergent global imaginaries. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How to cite this article:

WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:269–281. doi: 10.1002/wcc.219

INTRODUCTION which—in spite of all their uncertainties and internal

variation—paint a fairly coherent picture of rapid and
A t the present moment in time, there is a feeling
that not only the physical but also the intellectual
landscape is changing in the wake of global climate
rather alarming global warming.3 ‘Alarming’ again
pointing to a distinct human perception. The main
documents are the successive reports from the Inter-
change. There are climate sceptics who still question
governmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which
the global crisis and especially the anthropogenic
have become increasingly sinister—in relation to the
nature of the current trends of change, but most
desired, stable Earth System. While natural scientists
of the enlightened world agrees that the Earth system
have generally taken the lead in the debate on the
is facing a major challenge, even if climate is also a
consequences of climate change, social scientists are
concept to which a variety of social meanings adhere.1
increasingly invited to take part in the discussion; it
Meanings are social facts and have social effects, and
has convincingly been argued that the issue of climate
humanity in some ways stands at a threshold. It is
a threshold perceived and conceptualized by humans, change is not simply a ‘prediction problem’ but a more
for whom environmental and climatic issues are some complex question of how great risk society is willing
of the most daunting elements in the future of the to take on behalf of future generations (Ref 3, p. 21).
planet. This is ‘the inconvenient truth’ portrayed by This calls for the social sciences, where prediction is
Al Gore,2 who managed to capture a worldwide an even more complicated issue than it is in the ever
audience to his film (and his book), aiming explicitly more standardized climate modeling business.4
at raising global awareness and urge governments to For the social sciences, the challenge of
take political responsibility. prediction is related to the need for taking responsible
Beyond public campaigns, but feeding into them, social action before it is too late. This is hampered by
scientific investigations have addressed the complexi- Giddens’ paradox from the outset; the paradox ‘states
ties of climate change and mounted diverse scenarios, that, since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t
tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-
∗
Correspondence to: [email protected] day life, however awesome they appear, many will sit
Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature
Copenhagen, Denmark about them. Yet waiting until they become visible and
Conflict of interest: The author has declared no conflicts of interest acute before being stirred to serious action will, by
for this article. definition, be too late’ (Ref 5, p. 2). In a similar vein, it

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has been argued that the economics of climate change anthropology also shows how economic, political,
is very much an economics of risk and uncertainty, and and social imaginaries have direct bearings on the
that the risk of inaction in the face of climate change future, including the degree of warming and the
may be very severe; it has also been stressed that possibilities for mitigation. One recent imaginary
reducing the risks of climate change requires collective relates to the notion of the Anthropocene, directly
action (Ref 6, p. 644). This again presupposes an linking planetary concerns and human action, and
agreement about the risks, and—significantly—a succeeding the Holocene.11,12 While the label may
discussion of ‘the ecological, social, cultural and still be disputed within the earth sciences, there is
cognitive thresholds for adaptation and the question no doubt that it captures a general feeling of having
of how much change can we live with’ (Ref 7, p. 19). entered a new and truly planetary era.
Among the social sciences, anthropology is The Holocene started after the latest glacial
unique in its stress upon extensive fieldwork and qual- period and thus comprises the history of humanity
itative methods, implying close attention to the every- since the invention of agriculture and the emergence
day lives of people and to their own understandings of of the earliest known complex, urban societies—ap-
what is happening. This has provided a richly facetted parently following another abrupt climate change.13
knowledge about perceived changes of weather and The technological and social advancement since then
wind, reflecting the specificities of place and partic- has now come to a point where it is no longer possi-
ular ethnographic encounters. At the same time, it ble to understand the Earth as independent of human
is becoming increasingly clear that nobody is unaf- influence; hence the Anthropocene. After more than
fected by the current global interest in climate change; 10,000–12,000 years of agricultural development, on
whether their own backyard is directly afflicted or not, top of which we have seen some 200 years of intense
everybody is in the know. This means that the localized industrialization, an exponential global population
perceptions of climate change that anthropologists growth, and a massive urbanization, the human finger-
meet all over the world, are already affected—directly print is everywhere: on the land surface, in the oceans,
or indirectly—by the IPCC scenarios, and it has been and in the atmosphere. The Earth is so deeply marked
shown how the modelers’ ‘predictions’ are just specific by human activity that climate cannot be understood
versions of the general human and societal propen- without acknowledging this. In that sense, we are at
sity for forecasting and anticipation.8 Working within ‘nature’s end’, implying that everything has become
the shifting environments for social action, and with part of a human environment (Ref 14, p. 2–3).
people who live there and register the new weather By implication, in the Anthropocene it is no
realities, anthropologists offer a comprehensive under- longer possible to entertain a notion of a self-
standing of social resilience as embedded in everyday regenerating nature, beyond the human domain.
human agency and social responsibility—built upon Humans are all over the place, not only as destroyers
a sense of anticipation.9,10 Anthropologists, then, are of nature, of course, but also as providers of
not simply witnesses to local effects of global warm- regenerative solutions. It is part of human and
ing; they also contribute to vital discussions of scale social life to take action; agency and resilience are
and the framing of scientific inquiry. two sides of the same coin. For social agents to
The new realities of global connection through act consistently and to take responsibility for their
climate outstretch all anthropological theories about community they need to have reasonably well-founded
locality, sociality, and connectivity, and time has come expectations to the future; and these expectations will
not only to review the ways in which anthropology inevitably reflect the larger planetary concerns that
has recently embraced climate and contributed to cli- are infiltrating all social and cultural imaginaries.15
mate studies, but also to take stock of the theoretical While there may be some truth in the allegation
implications for an anthropology that was founded in that western enlightenment notions of an ‘objective’
direct social encounters rather than in planetary con- climate ‘exerts a stranglehold on the imaginations of
cerns. As I am going to argue toward the end, ‘climate the academic, political and policy elites’ (Ref 16, p. 3),
change’ potentially contributes to a refashioning of I am not convinced that ‘the rest of the world remains
anthropology itself. disenfranchised from such constructions of climate,
mere spectators, and are therefore emotionally,
PLANETARY IMAGERIES: THE psychologically, and culturally distanced from their
resulting products’ (Ref 16). Recent studies actually
CLIMATE OF ENLIGHTENMENT demonstrate how an objectified notion of climate is
Apart from contributing to a new awareness of present as a backdrop for most, localized perceptions
resilience and the agentive powers of people, of environmental change; people do not reason against

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such a notion but live and think with it, in their own abstract notions of climate is extensively documented
creative ways.17,18 There is no way to isolate ‘climate’ by Jan Golinski in his book oh the British weather
from the human world, and we have to learn to live and the climate of enlightenment.22 He traces the
with a hybrid climate—in the mundane as well as in development of a modern climate science, which in
the academic world.19 the 18th and early 19th centuries was closely related
For all its newness, the notion of the Anthro- to medical issues, and the perceived links between
pocene is actually a direct outcome of the planetary particular climates and personalities—later to be seen
consciousness that emerged in the enlightenment.20 as racial features. He also shows how toward the end
The 18th ambition to study and classify the whole of the 18th century, cleaning the air was a centerpiece
world opened it up for inspection and for abstraction; in major programs of social reform (Ref 23, p. 159 ff).
the emergent comparative knowledge of natures, for Golinski’s principal example is that of the
instance, allowed for a new kind of generalization, Great Storm in England in 1703, which was clearly
where the system of classification took precedence a disastrous climate event. The question, which is
over the individual plant, to invoke the work of Lin- enforcing itself upon us even now, if how we may link
neaus (Ref 21, p. 88 ff). This was the time of great the weather being experienced at the level of weather
scientific, often interdisciplinary expeditions setting events, and climate being a scientific abstraction.24
out from Europe, and encountering people who lived Climate scientists stress the distinction and claim
rather differently in the world. It was therefore also that it is impossible to speak sensibly about climate
the time where an incipient anthropology based on patterns if you have data for less than three decades,
empirical studies took off. Likewise, it is to the enlight- while five would be even better (Ref 3, p. 3). Evidently,
enment that we owe the impetus for a global climate there must be some agreement about the conceptual
science, even though it remained anchored in classical framework, but again, from an anthropological
thought—as it still does in many ways. In the his- perspective, weather events are always perceived as
tory of ideas there seems to be very few clean breaks, such within a larger framework of regularity or
and even the enlightenment recognition of a planetary normalcy, defining the sense of the weatherworld,
system had deep roots in earlier thought. within which people live, and from which they cannot
The notion of meteorology, for instance, is owed extract themselves to get an external view.25 The
to Aristotle. It derived from at concern with ‘meteors’, distinction between climate patterns and weather
i.e., those inexplicable appearances that had been events is not clear-cut, except in theory. This becomes
observed around the Earth. ‘Aristotle’s meteorology clear also when we move to recent, and burgeoning,
comprehended all phenomena that occurred in the anthropological analyses of the local experiences of
realm below the orbit of the moon, including comets, climate change; the new and unprecedented weather
shooting stars, and effluvia vented from beneath the events are invariably experienced within a larger
earth, as well as things that would later be considered pattern of perceived regularity, framing both the
truly atmospheric’ (Ref 22, p. 204). Aristotle was normal and the extreme. In the case of the Great
also among the first to announce the spherical nature Storm, Golinski shows how this event paved the
of the earth, which again gave rise to a notion way for meticulous weather observations by people in
of climata, zones that had a geographical rather general, and for a new climate science, which remained
than a meteorological (in our sense of the term) fraught by uncertainties and lack of predictive
significance (Ref 23, p. 94). The notion derived from power.22,26 Describing both patterns and anomalies
clima, meaning inclination, and reflected the relative is probably the most common way of configuring
length of the day due to the inclination of the sun climate at any point in time, including the present.
at various places. This resulted in rather arbitrary Enlightenment scientists practiced fieldwork on
and abstract lines, which were to hold a firm grip on a grand scale in the interest of discovering, mapping,
the imagination of the Earth right up to the present. and classifying different natures and societies in the
It also gives us the first inkling that 18th century world. A formidable representative of this tradition
enlightenment science was not the first to objectify or of discovering—and interpreting—nature by getting
climate and (allegedly) to alienate ordinary experience. out there with open senses is provided by German
The ancient view of climate was to remain geographer and biologist Alexander von Humboldt
implicit in enlightenment thinking, even while it (1769–1859), whose travels to America not only
was also increasingly acknowledged that people and reshaped the map, but also created a new sense
localized experiences always potentially modify or of nature’s life. Committed to a universal science,
contradict the neat lines of climate science. The it was nevertheless the detailed attention to the
potential dissonance between direct experience and individual elements and their circumstances that

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allowed Humboldt to generalize and to convey ‘the synthesizing both the whole of the atmospheric
wonder and variety of natural phenomena intending phenomena at a particular location, and the whole of
thereby to provide the reader with the same real climates in different locations (Ref 29, p. 587–588).
fascination and pleasure that he derived from both the The isoline technique made a new kind of cartography
scientific and the aesthetic contemplation of Nature’s possible.
delights’ (Ref 27, p. 122). When anthropology became a professional aca-
Humboldt’s work owed much to the philosoph- demic pursuit in the 19th century, it was closely tied
ical works of Johann Gottfried Herder (1784–91), up with the new geographical knowledge on the one
whose universal history of humankind was a remark- hand, and with a colonial interest to understand the
able enlightenment achievement.28 Herder’s work is lives of people elsewhere on the other. The latter part
particularly interesting for its stress upon the ways included issues of health in climates that were often
in which cultures had grown more or less organi- calamitous to British regiments abroad, for instance.
cally out of nature, yet remained intimately linked Heat and humidity were seen as the most dangerous
with the different continents and their constitution. atmospheric conditions, and to counter the repeated
This would have been part of the general background losses of troops abroad, something had to be done.
also for Alexander von Humboldt seeing himself as
a ‘historian of nature’ (Ref 27, p. 66), within his
larger commitment to a universal science. Humboldt’s ‘The rationale was to allow the individual to become
project lives as much in the text, as outside of it, and acclimatized. It was assumed that the settler from
it is ‘orchestrated by the infinitely expansive mind and Europe would gradually adjust to a tropical climate if
soul of the speaker’ (Ref 20, p. 121). Like anthropo- nature was allowed to do its work. Just as plants and
logical fieldwork today, Humboldt’s travels were not animals were thought to be transplantable to distant
so much directed at finding new facts as they were places, so people were expected to be modified by
instrumental to facilitating the knowledge of patterns the forces of nature itself to fit the climate to which
and relations. Humboldt wrote: the relocated. This was sometimes called ‘‘seasoning’’’
(Ref 22, p. 188).

Such reasoning inspired an early anthropological

Two main aims guided my travels, published as the
observation on the ‘acclimatization of man’ that links
Relation historique. I wanted to make known the
the spatial identification of climate to the constitution
countries I visited, and to collect those facts that helped
elucidate the new science vaguely called the Natural of the human races.30 While humankind as such may
History of the World, Theory of the Earth or Physical live all over the globe, Hunt questions the idea that
Geography . . . I was passionately keen on botany and the races are equally fit to do so and asserts that too
certain aspects of zoology, and flattered myself that little is known about the actual influence of climate
our researches might add some new species to those upon individuals and races to portray humans as truly
already known. However, rather than discovering cosmopolitan beings.
new, isolated facts I preferred linking already known
ones together. The discovery of a new genus seemed
to me far less interesting than an observation on the
No one will attempt to deny that, physically, mentally,
geographical relations of plants, or the migration of
and morally, there does exist a very considerable
social plants, and the heights that different plants
difference between the denizens of different parts of
reach on the peaks of the cordilleras. (Humboldt’s
the earth; and it is not proposed to inquire whether
Personal Narrative, in Ref 27, p. 66)
the various agents which constitute climate, and their
In the course of his work, Humboldt measured the collateral effects, are sufficient to produce the changes
we find in physique, mind, and morals; but, simply
world and (re-) invented ‘climate’; to him ‘climate
taking the various types of man as they now occur
meant ‘‘in the most general sense all changes in
on the earth, we have to determine whether we are
the atmosphere which noticeably affect the human justified in assuming that man is a cosmopolitan
organs’’, including temperature, humidity, barometric animal, and whether the power of acclimatization
pressure, or wind’ (Ref 29, p. 587). He suggested the be possessed equally by all races of man known to us.
notion of ‘isolines’, which—unlike the simple lines of (Ref 30, p. 51)
latitude—would take the height of mountains and the
actualities of coastal or inland climate patterns into Both Herder and Humboldt had stressed the
account. Thus, Humboldt’s definition linked climate intertwinement of history and nature, and we can
to both geographical location and human experience, see a similar line of thought in Hunt’s work, being
and it presupposed a composite view of climate, among the first anthropological analyses of climate.

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For Hunt, climate was as comprehensive as it had this change is not to be entirely ascribed to the
been for Humboldt, incorporating many variables, climate, there still is good presumptive evidence that
such as the landscape itself, its vegetation, available the Europeans have changed in America, especially
food-items and so forth. in North America. In the children of the colonists
there is a general languor, great excitability, and a
want of cool energy. As they grow up, they neglect
all manly sports. This general excitability and want of
In speaking, therefore, of climate, I use the word coolness and continuous energy is seen in the whole
in its fullest sense, and include the whole cosmic Yankee race. The women become decrepit very early,
phenomena. Thus, the physical qualities of a country and consequently cease to breed when still young. It
have an important connection with climate; and we is also affirmed that the second and third generations
must not simply consider the latitude and the longitude of European colonists have small families (Ref 30,
of a given locality, but its elevation and depression, its p. 55–56).
soil, its atmospheric influences, and also the quantity
of light, the nature of its water, the predominance It is important to note how both the notion of race and
of certain winds, the electrical state of the air, etc., the notion health are different from what they were to
atmospheric pressure, vegetation, and aliment, as all
become in the 20th century, and that both were firmly
these are connected with the question of climate (Ref
30, p. 52).
embedded in a particular environment—making their
mark on people as well as animals and plants. What is
All these variables contributed to an overturning equally interesting, when see from an Anthropocenic
of climate as a feature of simple geographical perspective, is the idea heralded by the historian of
location and it is in their various and variable America, William Robertson. He had suggested that
combinations that they influence the individual races mankind had attained the greatest perfection in the
and differentiate their capacities for adaptation to temperate regions of the globe and that the vigor and
the prevailing climates. By providing evidence ‘from sensibility of the European settlers in America had
that most valuable of all modern sciences, statistical made it possible for them to change the American
science’, mainly as applied to British military forces climate—by clearing the forests and cultivating the
in India, Hunt went on to substantiate his claim land (Ref 22, p. 180). American writers became
about different powers of acclimatization. This, again, increasingly aligned in the assertion that climate
provides the bottom line for evaluating the degree of had changed considerably since European settlement
cosmopolitanism inherent in the different races. Not began; the ‘climate Americans claimed as a national
surprisingly, the British seems to come out among the asset was one they believed they had molded—and
most successful, in spite of their misery in the Tropes. were continuing to mold—to meet the requirements
of their civilization’ (Ref 22, p. 193).
While the weather of the New World did
ENVIRONMENT, RACE, AND not really fit Old World experience, it was quickly
CULTURE: 19TH CENTURY embraced and exploited. However, some people of
PERCEPTIONS the New World seemed to live beyond climates that
could be moulded. Such was the case of the Eskimos,
Apart from discussing the relative ability to flourish in for instance, as suggested by Hunt. Claiming that it
other climates, Hunt also posed a question of whether was chiefly civilization which enabled the European to
any race of man can ‘move from its own ethnic centre bear the extremes of climate, and that, indeed, people
into another, and become changed into the type of that had to be civilized before they would even desire to
race which inhabits the region into which it migrates’ visit distant regions, Hunt continues:
(Ref 30, p. 55). The latter would change people into
new types, better suited to their new position. He
answers the question in the affirmative based on the
The Esquimaux, for instance, is perfectly happy in his
case of America, where the European immigrants seem own way, and has no desire to move to a warmer
to have changed their character: climate. His whole body and mind are suited for the
locality; and were he moved to a warm climate, he
would certainly perish. The whole organism of the
Some writers, in their anxiety to prove that climate has Esquimaux is fitted solely for a cold climate (Ref 30,
nothing to do with the varieties of man, deny that there p. 53).
is any change in the European inhabitants of America;
but recent researches give strong evidence that there At the time, anthropological knowledge about the
is a change in mind, morals, and physique; and while Eskimos was limited; they were known mainly from

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trappers and whalers, and from traders. The first to The nature of the geographical environments within
do an extensive ethnographic study of the Eskimo was which people lived, was less susceptible to change
Franz Boas, whose book on the Central Eskimo31 is a by human will, yet they were also not determining
baseline study for all later anthropological studies of culture. This dismantling of natural determinism
the (now) Inuit. Before becoming an anthropologist, became a baseline for 20th century anthropology,
Boas had moved from physics to geography, but after forming distinct ‘schools’—American, British, Central
a yearlong fieldtrip to the Arctic, in 1883–1884, he European, French—yet also increasingly committed to
moved to cultural anthropology—a new subject at understand the natives’ point of view, to paraphrase
the time. The formative trip went to Baffin Land, a famous passage in Malinowski’s first monograph
where Boas’ goal was to investigate the influence of from the Trobriand Islands,35 which came to serve as
the environment on people’s perceptions and their a baseline for modern ethnographic fieldwork.
movements, and he later wrote: ‘A year of life spent as
an Eskimo among Eskimos had a profound influence
upon the development of my views, not immediately, CULTURAL HOLISM AND CLIMATE:
but because it led me away from my former interests THE MODERNIST MOMENT
and toward the desire to understand the behavior of Malinowski’s fieldwork, which took place during
human beings’ (Ref 32 p. 201). World War I, is often seen as the mother of all
On the strength of his experience in Baffin Land, anthropological fieldwork, at least as an individual
Boas was ready to discuss the climate’s influence upon enterprise. In fact, it had been practiced before,
character, thus continuing the discussion started by notably in the so-called Torres Strait Expedition
Hunt. In an early article on ‘The aims of Ethnology’,33 to Australia 1898–1899, led by Haddon and other
which Boas sees as ‘the total study of social life’, Cambridge scientists, working as an (interdisciplinary)
he engages with what he calls ‘far-reaching theories team. Anna Grimshaw36 has suggested that this
that have been built on weak foundations’. And he expedition constituted ‘the modernist moment’ in
continues: anthropology, and it not only instantiated the idea
of being there (in the field) but also a new way of
seeing: no longer a study of mankind as such, or
Here belongs the attempt to explain history as aimed at classifying its sub-species (or races), field-
determined by the nature of the country in which anthropology drew attention to the concrete details
the people live. A relation between soil and history of actual social life, as it unfolded in a particular
cannot be denied, but we are not in a position to
environment. The modernist turn of anthropology,
explain social and mental behavior on this basis
and anthropo-geographical ‘‘laws’’ are valid only as
and the new fieldwork practice, meant that such
vague empty generalities. Climate and soil exert an comprehensive categories as ‘climate’ and ‘race’
influence upon the body and its functions, but it tended to disappear or to become simple background
is not possible to prove that the character of the information, while close attention to the actual
country finds immediate expression in that of its environment and its affordances was always paid.
inhabitants. It is said of the Negro, living in tropical The very physicality of fieldwork always made sensory
Africa and not troubled by lack of food, is lazy and experiences an important (if often unacknowledged)
does not take the trouble to clothe his body. The part of ‘being there’—including experiences of
Eskimo also is said to be made lazy by the Polar temperature, weather, and winds, of course.
night which dwarfs his imagination. Unfortunately The general observations on climate and the
such generalizations are entirely misleading. There are
seasons receded into the background, while more spe-
Negro tribes which punish anyone who appears in
cific descriptions of vegetation and the affordances of
public improperly clothed; while the tribes of Tierra
del Fuego which live in an inhospitable climate are the environment and their social and symbolic value
scantily clothed. The Eskimo, during the long winter were foregrounded. We may think of Marcel Mauss’
night, find entertainment in dance, song and story identification of a seasonal social morphology among
telling (Ref 33, p. 637). the Arctic peoples, for whom the seasons were con-
spicuous in the extreme.37 But we may also think of
Boas did his best to denaturalize the notion of race, Malinowski’s Coral Gardens and their Magic, where
and not least the idea of vastly different intellectual he states: ‘In this book we are going to meet the
capacities. From his own experience in America, it essential Trobriander. Whatever he might appear to
was the social inequalities that were the basis for others, to himself he is first and foremost a gardener.
racial prejudice, and which had to be addressed.34 His passion for his soil is that of a real peasant.
Nature in the sense of race was open to change. He experiences a mysterious joy in delving into the

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earth, in turning it up, planting the seed, watching the The disturbing fact in this passage (which reflects
plant grow, mature, and yield the desired harvest’ (Ref a larger trend particularly in American cultural
38, p. xix). Or think of Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer anthropology) is the stillness of the image of culture
opening with a long discussion of Nuer pastoral- itself. Elsewhere it has generally been acknowledged
ism and its ecological setting; the book is as much that cultural models and values are always in
about cattle, drought, and seasonal resources, as it the making, and that (global) historical processes
is about people.39 Nobody ever doubted that these originating elsewhere and going nowhere in particular
works were masterpieces in anthropology, not least cannot be extricated from ‘local’ cultural values.
because of their integration of natural affordances and The manifest infiltration of larger processes into
social forms into one picture. local social forms was first discussed shortly after
What was new in the early modernist anthro- World War II with the onset of anticolonial struggle.
pological analyses was not the observations of nature This naturally became another important moment
as such, but the gradual institution of an idea of in anthropology, where colonial relations had had
holism, each primitive society or culture being a a formative impact in the earlier days, in terms of
world onto itself, ecologically, socially, and cultur- the choice of fields as well as topics. The moment
ally. Holism in Malinowski’s case was concomitant fuelled a new interest in Marxist thought as applied
to the natural boundaries of the islands he stud- to different modes of reproduction; it also fuelled
ied, but it soon became an implicit model for all an interest in economic world systems as part of
social systems, including their natural resources. The a general post-colonial critique of anthropology.41
local became established as a social fact, even when The colonial encounter, which had been built into
larger patterns of navigation and exchange were also anthropology from its inception, was also analyzed
acknowledged, as in Malinowski’s Argonauts of the and overwritten.42 Not least because of the new
Western Pacific.35 This was to leave a long-lasting post-colonial realities, anthropology also increas-
imprint on anthropology; fieldwork itself produced ingly addressed transnational migration.43 Clearly,
a circumscribed object of study. While yielding an the ‘post-colonial moment’ was rather extensive and
impressive amount of detailed knowledge about spe- complex, but looking back we may now identify
cific places at particular points in time, it also tended a postmodern anthropology as a period where the
toward an unwarranted (analytical) isolation of indi- style shifted from a holistic to a more fragmentary
vidual peoples or ‘cultures’, whose wider movements ethnography.44 It was an important rejoinder against
and networks were often ignored. This anthropologi- facile positivism, but the drawback was that nature
cal concept of closed cultures was critically discussed was ‘written out’ of the anthropological works, all
as a narrative construction rather than a social fact in while it was acknowledged that cultures were noth-
the 1980s and 1990s. ing but written—meaning that they were narrative
Still, in spite of this critical discussion, in many constructs.45 The resulting social constructivism has
21st century studies of climate change, the legacy of been tempered if not obliterated in the 21st century;
holism is remarkable, if not actually reinvented, and anthropologists have realized that there are limits to
often leaves an impression of an anthropology belong- construction, and that the truly interesting questions
ing to yesteryear. For instance, in a recent review of always come when a particular social construction
anthropological climate research, it is argued that to must be accounted for. This certainly also applies
the general challenge of climate change and adapta- now that climate change has been cast as yet another
tion, social construction.46
Even if climate change is but another social
construction, in one sense or another, it has been
anthropology brings its core theoretical tenet: that remarkably successful, and this is where the interesting
culture frames the way people, perceive, understand, anthropological questions begin. The immediate
experience, and respond to key elements of the worlds answer is that the expansiveness and strength of
they live in. This framing is grounded in systems the notion is owed to its resonance with human
of meanings and relationships that mediate human
experience across the globe. As so many field-
engagements with natural phenomena and processes.
studies have documented, local weather worlds are
This framing is particularly relevant to the study of
climate change, which entails movement away from a destabilized and perceived as being out of bounds; the
known past, through an altered present, and toward current weather events no longer fit pre-established
an uncertain future, since what is recalled, recognized, ideas of normality. It remains somewhat paradoxical
or envisaged rests on cultural models and values (Ref that this well-documented development has tended to
40 p. 87). throw anthropology back to earlier notions of holism,

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bounded cultures, and local knowledge. Yet it may be that document shared forms of reasoning between
explicable on at least two accounts. First, it reflects scientists and Arctic hunters, for instance.52 But let us
a genuinely respectful stance toward the people with return to the glaciers:
whom one works in the field, and whose perceptions
and interpretations of what goes on in the world the
anthropologist must get to know. Second, it relates to a
In the Gulf of Alaska, where European and Aboriginal
powerful discourse on vulnerability and adaptation in forms of internationalism have been enmeshed for
human geography and environmental anthropology, two centuries, physical places and people have always
in which it is generally acknowledged that ‘one of been entangled. In the future, they are likely to be
the greatest problems in implementing adaptation lies more entangled than ever before. Local knowledge in
in identifying who and what is vulnerable, and even northern narratives is about unique entanglements of
in specifying who has the right and responsibility culture and nature, humans and landscapes, objects
for identifying who and what is vulnerable’ (Ref 7, and their makers (Ref 51, p. 259).
p. 9). Such questions possibly induce anthropologists
to focus on their own fields and seek to alert the While changes are indeed occurring and fine-grained
outer world to new local vulnerabilities in the wake ethnographies of local perceptions have seen light, not
of environmental changes.47 The new plights are least in the Arctic,53 there is more at stake in the
seen to include a sense of cultural loss, owing to current discussion of climate change in anthropology
climate change,48 and to being side-lined by the and its bearing on indigenous cultures in particular.
hegemonic climate discourse originating in western As suggested by Cameron, the problem ‘is the
science.49 As pointed out by Kempf,50 the hemming equation of Indigeneity and the human self with the
in of cultures once again may be less than productive traditional and the local, and the ways in which such
in a moving world, also when done in the best of a formulation extends colonial forms of knowledge
interests. and practice’ (Ref 54, p. 111). Even the most well-
While, obviously, anthropologists must pay meaning ethnographic practice of listening to and
close attention to so-called traditional ecological recording ‘native voices’ potentially denies people
knowledge (TEK) whenever they engage with the new their place in a global order, climatic, political, and
weather realities, right now there is an unwarranted moral.
(and unproductive) epistemological closure around In short, if climate at first seemed to slip
local knowledge as inherently traditional and stable, away with the advent of social constructionism and
quite apart from its being inherently more valuable postmodern anthropology, it came back full force
than other kinds of knowledge. As shown by Julie in the wake of the new planetary concerns in the
Cruikshank,51 who has studied the encounter between 21st century, as summed up in the notion of the
different stories about glaciers in North-western Anthropocene, for instance. At the same time, climate
America, there has always been a multiplicity of change also fostered a disturbing return to a form
understandings even in the most ‘traditional’ of of holism and cultural closure that was actually
cultures. Cruikshank demonstrates how the glaciers definitively undermined by the environment itself. In
play an active role in negotiating the modern terrain the lived realities of most people, climate change is
of science, history, and politics in the mountains very much part of their lives, but not simply as a local
where the different kinds of knowledge add each fact of peculiar weather events. As noted by a scholar
their own bit to the larger puzzle. This resonates well of the Arctic: ‘For most people in Arctic nations the
with the position taken in this article; Cruikshank’s phenomenon of climate change is now a piece of
comprehensive analysis of various views upon the their lifeworlds because it has entered the space of
glaciers from the Little Ice Age until now adds communicative action, the social space where people
substance to the critique of seeing indigenous engage ideas and have meaningful debate’ (Ref 55,
knowledge as a closed epistemological system, which p. 92). The bow to Habermas is well taken because it
inevitably will start to fragment when other kinds reminds us that even though in many ways beyond the
of knowledge become accessible. The distinction immediate horizon of international politics, people
of traditional environmental knowledge presupposes ‘out there’ are by no means ignorant of the larger
an equally distinct and a unified ‘modern’ kind climate threat. In fact, all of us are party to a
of knowledge, which is also untenable—as evident communicative space where the portents of the IPCC
from the many strands of anthropology that weave reports are—to a greater or lesser degree—part of a
themselves in and out of each other in the course of localized knowledge hailing from many sources and
time, but which is also substantiated in ethnographies experiences.

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WIREs Climate Change Anthropological contributions to the study of climate

ETHNOGRAPHIES OF GLOBAL Even though people obviously continue to live

CONNECTION: CLIMATES OF and act in particular places, it becomes urgent to
FRICTION develop new modes of understanding the human
and social implications of natural entanglement. The
While global climate change has descended into all notion of entanglement does not preclude ethno-
weatherworlds as part of their frame, a number of gen- graphic fieldwork; it rather adds to both its necessity
erative metaphors have likewise become globalized. and its theoretical potential. It is interesting here to
Whether based in technologies of computer simulation recall Geertz’ circumscription of fieldwork in his book
or in more direct descriptive language, the metaphors After the Fact.59 He says: ‘It is not history, one is faced
point to a unified concern with the challenge of config- with, nor biography, but a confusion of histories, a
uring the long-term regularity and the one-time event swarm of biographies. There is order in it all of some
within one and the same image. Whether the latter are sort, but it is the order of a squall or a street market:
clad in the words of ‘canaries and whistleblowers’,56 nothing metrical’ (Ref 59, p. 2). Today the confusion
‘strange meteoric events’,22 or ‘tipping points’,57 they of histories implies an entanglement of natural, social,
stand out on a background of presumed regularity, political, economic, and other phenomena, possibly
as does any climate change narrative, by implication. originating in different places and different times, yet
The global space for communicative action includes inseparable in the actuality of the moment. This defini-
such broadly accepted metaphors. tively suspends preconceived notions of well-defined
This poses a new challenge for field-working localities. I contend that it is one of the major chal-
anthropologists for whom the global connections are lenges for present day anthropology to come to terms
local facts. With a view to another (but not totally with an entangled reality that defies conventional
unrelated) environmental issue, Anna Tsing21 has understandings of holism and of causation, and calls
recently suggested a new ethnographic take on global for a new understanding of scale.60 This is the more
connection. Tsing studied the fate of the Indonesian pressing, since climate change has also set humanity
rainforest, increasingly threatened by capitalist in motion, and thus in many ways contributed to a
enterprise and deforestation but also vigorously delocalization of anthropological research.61
It has been argued that globalization has been
defended by a wide range of local and international
mostly negative; ‘unchecked, unsupplemented, and
environmentalists with each their vocabulary. While
uncompensated for by a ‘positive’ counterpart which
all of the vocabularies address the same issue, there are
is still a distant prospect at best, though according
significant frictions between them—frictions that do
to some prognoses already a forlorn chance’ (Ref 62,
not necessarily prevent a dialogue, but certainly makes
p. 96). With climate change, there is little point in
it expedient. This is an important contribution to an
simply distributing the blame, however, because all
understanding of the actualities of local environmental
people are in it together, and because both culpability
vulnerability in the wake of global capitalism and its
and justice extend far beyond the present genera-
uneven infiltration of particular places, where people tions—both back and forth in time. Anthropology
meet and agree to speak. works here and now, but can only do so meaningfully
Turning back to climate change, it is certainly with a keen eye for the multiple temporal and spatial
clear that factual statements about globalization in scales implied in social action. Within anthropology
terms of transnational flows and global encounters itself, it may pay off to look both at the different
cannot account for the interpenetration of phenomena historical turns of anthropology and the different
that belong to different scales. Global warming (national) traditions, featuring different views upon
introduces new disjunctions and inequities in the the nature/culture intertwinement.63 On that basis,
world, while established knowledge about the we may get a sense of an emerging anthropological
environment becomes destabilised—in science and object, transcending (and incorporating) earlier wis-
elsewhere. ‘The global’ is what envelops the local all dom—and opening up new doors for understanding
while becoming part of it. Global terrors, climatic and interdisciplinary conversation.
or political, thus ‘descend into the ordinary’, to What anthropologists are facing today is not
paraphrase Veena Das58 on violence, but they do simply a new set of connections or new uncertain-
so in uneven ways. We need new ethnographies to ties, but possibly an emerging global imaginary, to
show how this imbalance occurs, and how people expand the notion of the ‘social imaginary’ suggested
become literally unsettled as nature develops out of by Charles Taylor.64 His main concern is the modern
bounds—ethnographies that take the entanglement of social imaginary as grown out of the enlightenment,
the local and the global for granted. and having until this day set the moral framework

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of society. Importantly, Taylor is not positing the social processes, and the possible anthropological
imaginary in contrast to the institutional; rather he is studies, are certainly not delineated by fixed cultures
suggesting the term for ‘what enables, through making or well-defined societies. This is where 19th century
sense of, the practices of a society’ (Ref 64, p. 2). It studies of climate may teach us a lesson, and remind
is underpinned by a particular moral order, which in us that the historical and ideational framework of
the modern period became closely associated with the analysis always infiltrates description. With climate
idea of natural law, and with the political entity of the change, it is as important as ever to acknowledge
state and the social contract it entailed. Over the past that our collaborators in the field are no more
centuries, the modern social imaginary has expand- prisoners to a unified and closed tradition than are
ed—to places beyond the western core, and to domains the ethnographers.
beyond natural law and state politics (Ref 64, p. 5). I would argue that the vitality of anthropology
I want to argue that, partly owing to the unifica- lies in its ability to move along with history itself,
tion of the globe through climate change, we are on the defining and redefining its concepts as realities shift,
verge of a new global imaginary. The political entity and transcending ‘the local’ by identifying its implicit
of the state and the social contract between the state connections to other places, other times, other kinds
and its citizens and between the citizens themselves
of knowledge. Recent concerns about global climate
need revision. The moral order must expand beyond
change constitute a major shift in the world, or at
national boundaries, because people’s imaginations
least in thinking about the world; it has already
are deeply infiltrated by global connections and
impinged upon a global moral order that has been
images, with new normative notions and expectations
emerging from way before the announcement of the
emerging as a consequence—if still dimly perceived.
Anthropocene, but which has become increasingly
It has been suggested that climate change constitutes
a ‘perfect moral storm’, implying ‘the convergence important because of the new framework for
of a number of factors that threaten our ability to understanding that this very notion heralds.
behave ethically’.65 At the same time it is a moment of This, in my view, places anthropologists at
great theoretical potential, because of the redistribu- a watershed: either they look backwards in a
tion of cause and effect across time and space, and an (theoretically) nostalgic mode, insisting on the need to
intergenerational responsibility that distributes sub- bound and protect local ‘cultures’; or they go forward
jects (agents) and objects (victims) of actions in time, with the tide of times, acknowledging that even the
and poses new questions of culpability and justice. remotest of populations are already embedded within
For anthropology, the challenge is to tease out a a global imaginary, and might even suffer from being
new sense of causality in the human and social domain isolated. To act responsibly in the world, it is my
that may embrace several scales at once. The modern conviction that the second road is the only possible
myth of unidirectional progress, maturation, and even one; as global subjects each and everyone is part
civilization has come to an end, as has the dominant of one and the same global communicative space.
narrative of the nation and its sovereign people. We Surely, people are differently placed within it, but
are way past the metrical also in this respect, to re- as the resource bases and weather regimes shift so
invoke Geertz; this is once again where the modern may these emplacements. It is this elusiveness of
social imaginary falls short of reality and must abide place that field studies now reveal, puncturing the
to the inherent frictions within and between localized idea of closed cultural spaces, while opening up for
understandings, always incorporating different kinds renewed understanding of the multiplicities of scale
and scales of knowledge. inherent in localized knowledge. To conceptualize and
possibly outbalance the inequality of access to natural,
economic, and political resources, anthropologists
CONCLUSION: A WATERSHED IN must recognize this.
ANTHROPOLOGY? Facing a global problem with stark local implica-
The general proposition of this article is that tions—environmentally, economically, politically, and
anthropology itself stands at a watershed, where socially, anthropology may contribute vitally to an
new global connections through climate challenge understanding of truly global predicaments by offer-
the 20th century constitutive holistic object in ways ing theoretical suggestions, not only, and not even
that go beyond previous post-modernist critique. It principally, about how global warming affects local
is not simply a matter of deconstructing the notion communities differently (threatening their ‘culture’),
of culture, but of redefining and rescaling the notion but about how actions even at the smallest scale influ-
of holism itself. The entanglements of natural and ence the flows on the macroscopic surface, and vice

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WIREs Climate Change Anthropological contributions to the study of climate

versa. It took a long time for the climate scientists to action and reflection—anthropological allegiance may
establish confidence and trust in their own models,66,67 become truly global and reflect what Hilary Put-
and it will take some time also for anthropologists nam has called a pragmatic enlightenment.69 Like
to align their efforts at creating a kind of unified the previous enlightenment it combines a revolution
knowledge on the strength of multiple, and radically in knowledge with one in ethics. For Putnam, the
diverse ethnographies, featuring human agency and new ethics is without ontology; it is not a matter of
social responsibility as part of the solution to the cur- principles but of practical concerns. This will take
rent challenges. But I believe that possibly the most the implicit cosmopolitanism of anthropology70 into
valuable legacy of anthropology so far is the sincere
a new era—framed not only by moving subjects, con-
attempt—through the ages—to come to grips with the
tinued dialogue, and respect, but also by a deeper
entanglement of natural and social realities without
theoretical understanding of the planetary entangle-
simplifying the causal link.68 Throughout, anthropol-
ogists have paid heed to human agency and social ments and human responsibilities. While certainly not
responsibility mediating between the two domains, suggesting that climate is all there is to the world, I
and this is where we have valuable general knowledge claim that climate offers a strategic perspective allow-
to offer on a par with natural scientific knowledge. ing for a new take on the complex issue of global
Given the current challenges—and the long- entanglements—a new way of seeing the world beyond
term anthropological attention to everyday social conventional categories such as nature and culture.

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FURTHER READING
Descola P, Pálsson G, eds. Nature and Society. Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge; 1996.
Hastrup F. Weathering the World. Recovery in the Wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village. New York
and Oxford: Berghahn Books; 2011.
Ingold T. The Perception of the Environment. London: Routledge; 2000.
Massey D. For Space. London: Sage.; 2005.
Mathews A. Instituting Nature. Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests. Cambrigde, MA: The
MIT Press; 2011.
Kopnina E, Shoreman-Ouimet E, eds. Environmental Anthropology Today. London and New York: Routledge;
2011.

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