Das Anthropozän hat eine noch junge Geschichte, und die Geologie ist sich uneinig, ob es sich tat... more Das Anthropozän hat eine noch junge Geschichte, und die Geologie ist sich uneinig, ob es sich tatsächlich um eine neue erdgeschichtliche Epoche handelt. Doch unabhängig davon hat sich das Anthropozän in den Erdsystemwissenschaften, in der Geologie und schließlich in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften etabliert, und es wird in der Kunst oder im Feuilleton diskutiert. Diese Erfolgsgeschichte zeichnet Christoph Antweiler in seinem Buch „Anthropologie im Anthropozän“ nach und arbeitet grundsätzliche Argumentationslinien heraus.
Ibrahim, Y. und Rödder, S. (Hg) Schlüsselwerke der Sozialwissenschaften, S. 373-378, 2022
In der Klimaforschung spielen terrestrische Ökosysteme eine zentrale Rolle. Der Klimawandel hat e... more In der Klimaforschung spielen terrestrische Ökosysteme eine zentrale Rolle. Der Klimawandel hat erhebliche Auswirkungen auf den Boden und kann zu Desertifikation oder Erosion führen, während umgekehrt die Art der Landnutzung Einfluss auf das Klima hat (vgl. auch → Bulkeley et al. 2015). Kurzum, terrestrische Ökosysteme sind ein fester Bestandteil der Klimaforschung, und gleichzeitig sind sie eine der großen Unbe- kannten. Das liegt daran, dass sie als Landschaften von Menschen bewohnt, gestaltet und verwaltet werden, und dass sie eine Geschichte haben, in der Naturgeschichte und die Geschichte der Menschen schwer zu trennen sind. Hier kommen die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften ins Spiel. Die Ethnologie und andere Disziplinen, die ethnographisch arbeiten, praktizieren im Gegensatz zum ›remote sensing‹ der Klimaforschung, also der Wahrnehmung aus großer Distanz, teilnehmende Beobachtung auf Augenhö- he, sozusagen ein ›close sensing‹, mit Hilfe von allen Sinnen (→ Ethnologische Klimawandelforschung). Die ethnologische Erforschung von Landschaften hat ein Klima zum Gegenstand, das als Gegenstand der Sorge und Verantwortung in vielfältiger Weise lokalisiert und materialisiert ist (Krauß 2009).
Meat is stupid': Covid-19 and the co-development of climate activism 'Meat is stupid' (Fleisch is... more Meat is stupid': Covid-19 and the co-development of climate activism 'Meat is stupid' (Fleisch ist doof, fig.1) was my favourite protest sign at a Fridays for Future demonstration in April 2019, in Lower Saxony in the north of Germany. In retrospect, the slogan anticipated the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus among the workers in the regional slaughterhouses the following year. Covid-19 also interrupted my research about co-developing local climate activism, with a special focus on narratives of change as the missing link between science and society (Krauß and Bremer 2020). Anthropologists like developing stories and are well equipped to follow the process of how climate change turns from a global matter of fact into a locally meaningful matter of concern (Callison 2014). 'Meat is stupid' contains such a narrative of change, which is easily dismissed as a high school student joke, but it is much more than that. At the end of the Fridays for Future demonstration, I met an activist of an environmental NGO who had attended a public climate workshop which I had previously held in a nearby coastal village. We spontaneously decided to organise another workshop, to transform the spirit of the demonstration into sustainable civic activity. In September 2019, the event, dubbed Klimamarkt (climate market), took place in an old farmhouse in Westerstede in the Ammerland district, with about 60 people attending. We asked the participants to imagine a climate-friendly future for the Ammerland. What does it take to get there, what is urgently needed, what exactly has to change? We roughly ordered the contributions into categories such as health, nutrition, land use, building, mobility, water, energy and construction. For each of these categories, working groups were organised that met in the following weeks. Our intention was to stage a follow-up workshop in spring 2020, where the results should be discussed with local politicians and administrators. But suddenly, the outbreak of Covid-19 impeded all public activities, and we had to postpone the workshop. In Germany and elsewhere, new forms of civic climate activities are urgently needed. As a matter of fact, technologies of climate governance already shape the coastal landscape with its wind turbines, the new climate-proof dykes and biogas tanks, and climate increasingly pervades public administration and political rhetoric. But while there are hardly any climate sceptics in this coastal area, the hidden climate costs of our way of life are still poorly represented in politics. As I learned during my fieldwork, these repressed climate issues are increasingly addressed by concerned citizens at the local level, in everyday conversations and daily routines. This is one of the reasons why Fridays for Future is such a success story, and it was the starting point for our initiative to co-develop new forms of climate activism with coastal dwellers.
In this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen,... more In this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen, a huge bay at the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. To write about atmospheres means evoking a specific forcefield, which is different from observing and analyzing an object from a distance. In the first part, I write about my own experience of the coastal atmosphere by "looking around rather than ahead," as Tsing (2015) defined the art of noticing. Based on his paintings, on literature, and interviews, I show in the second part how a local artist, the painter Franz Radziwill, made the specific atmosphere of Dangast explicit. Finally, I follow a citizens' initiative on their way to preserve the specific atmosphere of this coastal village as an artists' place. In doing so, I provide a detailed insight into the atmospheres of democracy, which define how transitions take place and decisions are taken locally. In the conclusion, I argue that the focus on coastal atmospheres is a way to transcend the boundaries between nature and culture and to undermine the teleological argument of growth and development which more often than not shape coastal politics.
Journal for Environmental Law and Policy 1/2011, 1-15, 2011
In this article, we discuss the advisory capacity of climate science for political and societal d... more In this article, we discuss the advisory capacity of climate science for political and societal decisions. To provide options, open up perspectives and enhance the understanding for the dynamics of climate is a task we name climate services. After a general discussion, experiences of providing these services on a regional and local scale – Northern Germany, the metropolitan area of Hamburg and the Baltic Sea Basin – during the last few years is reviewed.Key components of this regional climate service is the establishment of a regional climate office, of regional IPCC-like assessments of knowledge about regional and local climate change, and detailed homogeneous data sets describing changing weather statistics (i.e., climate) in past decades and in perspectives for the next several decades.
Vor der Franzosischen Revolution ging an alle Gemeinden, Dorfer und Stadte in Frankreich ein Frag... more Vor der Franzosischen Revolution ging an alle Gemeinden, Dorfer und Stadte in Frankreich ein Fragebogen, in den sie eintragen konnten, unter welchen Bedingungen sie lebten, welche Steuern sie zu zahlen hatten und was sie dringend brauchten. Die Liste der Beschwerden war lang und ein- drucklich, schließlich litt man unter der Willkur des Adels, es gab Hunger, und die Infrastrukturen ließen zu wünschen ubrig. Aus diesen Beschwer- deheften entstand eine vollstandige und buchstablich zu verstehende Geo- Grafie des Landes. Daran erinnert Bruno Latour in seinem Buch 'Das terres- trische Manifest' aus aktuellem Anlass. Was wurde heute in einem solchen Beschwerdeheft stehen, wenn danach gefragt wurde, was es braucht, um ein gutes Leben zu fuhren? Ein gutes Leben im Sinne von klimafreundlich, erdverbunden und dennoch weltoffen? Gerade vor dem Hintergrund des Aufstiegs von Populismus und Trumps Ausstieg aus dem Klimavertrag von Paris gewinnt diese Frage an Relevanz. Weder Brexit, America First noch Heimattumelei sind eine gesunde Reaktion auf den Stress, den die globalen Probleme soziale Ungleichheit, Migration und Klimawandel verursachen.
Abstract
This article addresses the appropriate place for and design of climate services drawing... more Abstract This article addresses the appropriate place for and design of climate services drawing upon a case study of three different forms of climate service delivery in a coastal landscape in Northern Germany. Each of these forms addresses different audiences and provides different types of knowledge about climate change and a different orientation toward policy support. The three-part case study includes a regional, a municipal and a social climate service. Drawing upon this comparative, case-based research, I develop the idea of ‘slowing down climate services’, based on the ‘slow science manifesto’ introduced by the science philosopher Isabelle Stengers, by postnormal science and by political ecology as suggested by Bruno Latour. How does climate change become a matter of concern? Slowing down climate services means following the social life of scientific facts, engaging with the public and exploring ways to improve democratic and place-based decision making. I argue that there is an urgent need to overcome the big science orientation of climate services and to add what Stengers calls ‘public intelligence’, the integration of a sense of place and of the social, cultural, political and other performative aspects of climate change in specific landscapes. Keywords: slow science; postnormal science; political ecology; matters of concern
Greschke, H. and J. Tischleer (eds.) Grounding global climate change, 2015
There is more at stake in the Anthropocene than a simple addition of natural sciences and those c... more There is more at stake in the Anthropocene than a simple addition of natural sciences and those concerned with the anthropos. It is not sufficient to identify planetary boundaries, tipping points and limits of growth from a scientific perspective in order to successfully implement sustainable development or effective climate politics. We have to take into account the double challenge of global change, which affects our environment as well as our intellectual dispositions.
in: Howard, P., Thompson, I. and E. Waterton (eds) The Routledge Companion to Landcape Studies. London, New York: Routledge, 2nd edition, pp. 62-73, 2019
Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climat... more Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climate. This paper analyses how climate change is emerging as a matter of concern in the public spheres of Bergen, and interprets how this concern is affecting Bergen’s identity, with implications for the city’s climate risk governance. Historically, Bergen has a strong identity as Europe’s rainiest city, manifested in its cultural and social life. In the past 15 years, Bergen’s identity has been shifting from a ‘weather city’ to a ‘climate city’. This paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews and document analysis to map this shift as co-produced by certain social and natural events and processes; told as narratives of change. This identity shift is creating surprising hybrid representations of climate that are locally meaningful, shaped as much by Bergen’s cultural weatherworld as by incoming ideas of climate change. These representations influence Bergen’s attitudes towards climate risk governance, and may extend influence to global scales via climate city networks. This identity shift also moves the timeframe of risk governance. As a weather city, risks were implicit to the city’s heritage and peoples’ lived experience. But as a climate city, risks are predicted, to foresee and prevent impacts. Critically employing co-production as an analytical lens can help us understand the multiple facets to cities’ climate risk governance, including the role of culture and identity.
In this introduction, we situate the topic of this Special Issue on 'narratives of change' in the... more In this introduction, we situate the topic of this Special Issue on 'narratives of change' in the scholarly literature about how we inform climate risk governance, including through climate services. We argue that many places experience a persistent mismatch between predominantly science-based and technical framings of climatic risk on the one hand, and the place-based un-derstandings of climate extremes and responses of people living in these places on the other. We introduce the case studies presented in this issue and highlight their common focus on 'narratives of change' as one missing link in climate governance. Narratives of change address the past, present and future of a specific place understood as a weather-world, adding a cultural dimension to climate change experienced as a succession of weather and seasons. We focus on memories of extreme weather events and how people coped with them, in order to improve climate gov-ernance under future climatic change. We argue that attention to local narratives expands the scope of issues covered by climate information and improves its integration into social and cultural life. We offer up seven lessons for why it is important to incorporate narratives in climate governance and suggest some creative methods for doing so. Post-normal science, art-science cooperation, and the inclusion of the humanities mark the difference that the individual contributions make to the literature about climate governance and democratic decision-making. 1. Narratives and climate risk governance "We tell ourselves stories in order to live", the writer Joan Didion (2009, 11) famously stated. "We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices". What kind of stories do we tell about a changing climate, about extreme weather, rising sea level or changes in the seasons? Which story is the most workable to locally make sense of a global phenomenon and its effects? In this special issue, we bring together place-based stories about climate change with scientific information. Climate change is materializing locally in different ways, both as a change of weather and a change of politics. Climate change already plays a role in shifting governance and decision-making regimes in all of the places discussed in this special issue, yet none could claim to have made their endangered communities 'climate proof'. The articles in this issue argue for the inclusion of local narratives of change, alongside climate science, for a broader and critical understanding of climate risk governance. Local narratives serve to improve knowledge of the impacts of climatic change (the problem framing), introduce local ways of relating to and coping with these changes, and root https://doi.
After the Paris Agreement, the transition towards a carbon free society necessitates new forms of... more After the Paris Agreement, the transition towards a carbon free society necessitates new forms of collaboration between climate science and society. In my article, I argue that the increasing participation of disciplines from the humanities represent a cultural turn in climate risk gov-ernance. At the example of my anthropological case study at the Northern German coastline, I show that the co-development of place-based climate services for action means a challenge to the science-based definition of climate change and the resulting problem-solving strategies. Climate change materializes in form of extreme weather events, changes in the seasons and sea level rise. Local narratives represent these changes, expand the problem definition of climate change and express the multiple entanglements of weather, climate and society. Past flood disasters and interactions with the sea are presented in different configurations of time and space that put emerging forms of climate services into context. Narratives of change serve as a localization device and as starting point for the co-development of climate services for action. Collaborations between science and humanities on the one hand, and between researchers and local actors on the other are an open-ended process. In form of a field report, I identify diverse narratives of change and first steps towards the co-development of new forms of climate services. At the example of a scenario workshop, I describe local visions of climate risk governance, with climate researchers as facilitators and moderators of public forums motivated for action. This essay provides an anthropological insight into this process and details the procedures of emerging collaborations, making use of field notes, anthropological self-reflection and narrative theory.
Pastoral landscapes are mostly located in agriculturally marginalised areas such as mountain upla... more Pastoral landscapes are mostly located in agriculturally marginalised areas such as mountain uplands or sandy heathlands. For this reason they have usually not undergone the processes of intensification, enclosure and specialisation characteristic of urbanised core agricultural areas, and as a result they often involve complex forms of agriculture that spatially and temporally interweave grazing, cultivation (e.g. fodder) and extensive agro-forestry (e.g. fruit and nuts). They are therefore also often linked to customary ways of life and agricultural practices such as commoning and other collective activities that do not serve exclusively economic profit motives. Pastoral landscapes as forms of cultural practices often produce and conserve biologically diverse and unique environments. Unfortunately, however, the economic marginalisation of these pastoral areas means that they have become vulnerable to depopulation and abandonment due to poor social and physical infrastructure (schools, roads), and have become co-dependent on supplementary economic activities (construction, food processing).
Das Anthropozän hat eine noch junge Geschichte, und die Geologie ist sich uneinig, ob es sich tat... more Das Anthropozän hat eine noch junge Geschichte, und die Geologie ist sich uneinig, ob es sich tatsächlich um eine neue erdgeschichtliche Epoche handelt. Doch unabhängig davon hat sich das Anthropozän in den Erdsystemwissenschaften, in der Geologie und schließlich in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften etabliert, und es wird in der Kunst oder im Feuilleton diskutiert. Diese Erfolgsgeschichte zeichnet Christoph Antweiler in seinem Buch „Anthropologie im Anthropozän“ nach und arbeitet grundsätzliche Argumentationslinien heraus.
Ibrahim, Y. und Rödder, S. (Hg) Schlüsselwerke der Sozialwissenschaften, S. 373-378, 2022
In der Klimaforschung spielen terrestrische Ökosysteme eine zentrale Rolle. Der Klimawandel hat e... more In der Klimaforschung spielen terrestrische Ökosysteme eine zentrale Rolle. Der Klimawandel hat erhebliche Auswirkungen auf den Boden und kann zu Desertifikation oder Erosion führen, während umgekehrt die Art der Landnutzung Einfluss auf das Klima hat (vgl. auch → Bulkeley et al. 2015). Kurzum, terrestrische Ökosysteme sind ein fester Bestandteil der Klimaforschung, und gleichzeitig sind sie eine der großen Unbe- kannten. Das liegt daran, dass sie als Landschaften von Menschen bewohnt, gestaltet und verwaltet werden, und dass sie eine Geschichte haben, in der Naturgeschichte und die Geschichte der Menschen schwer zu trennen sind. Hier kommen die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften ins Spiel. Die Ethnologie und andere Disziplinen, die ethnographisch arbeiten, praktizieren im Gegensatz zum ›remote sensing‹ der Klimaforschung, also der Wahrnehmung aus großer Distanz, teilnehmende Beobachtung auf Augenhö- he, sozusagen ein ›close sensing‹, mit Hilfe von allen Sinnen (→ Ethnologische Klimawandelforschung). Die ethnologische Erforschung von Landschaften hat ein Klima zum Gegenstand, das als Gegenstand der Sorge und Verantwortung in vielfältiger Weise lokalisiert und materialisiert ist (Krauß 2009).
Meat is stupid': Covid-19 and the co-development of climate activism 'Meat is stupid' (Fleisch is... more Meat is stupid': Covid-19 and the co-development of climate activism 'Meat is stupid' (Fleisch ist doof, fig.1) was my favourite protest sign at a Fridays for Future demonstration in April 2019, in Lower Saxony in the north of Germany. In retrospect, the slogan anticipated the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus among the workers in the regional slaughterhouses the following year. Covid-19 also interrupted my research about co-developing local climate activism, with a special focus on narratives of change as the missing link between science and society (Krauß and Bremer 2020). Anthropologists like developing stories and are well equipped to follow the process of how climate change turns from a global matter of fact into a locally meaningful matter of concern (Callison 2014). 'Meat is stupid' contains such a narrative of change, which is easily dismissed as a high school student joke, but it is much more than that. At the end of the Fridays for Future demonstration, I met an activist of an environmental NGO who had attended a public climate workshop which I had previously held in a nearby coastal village. We spontaneously decided to organise another workshop, to transform the spirit of the demonstration into sustainable civic activity. In September 2019, the event, dubbed Klimamarkt (climate market), took place in an old farmhouse in Westerstede in the Ammerland district, with about 60 people attending. We asked the participants to imagine a climate-friendly future for the Ammerland. What does it take to get there, what is urgently needed, what exactly has to change? We roughly ordered the contributions into categories such as health, nutrition, land use, building, mobility, water, energy and construction. For each of these categories, working groups were organised that met in the following weeks. Our intention was to stage a follow-up workshop in spring 2020, where the results should be discussed with local politicians and administrators. But suddenly, the outbreak of Covid-19 impeded all public activities, and we had to postpone the workshop. In Germany and elsewhere, new forms of civic climate activities are urgently needed. As a matter of fact, technologies of climate governance already shape the coastal landscape with its wind turbines, the new climate-proof dykes and biogas tanks, and climate increasingly pervades public administration and political rhetoric. But while there are hardly any climate sceptics in this coastal area, the hidden climate costs of our way of life are still poorly represented in politics. As I learned during my fieldwork, these repressed climate issues are increasingly addressed by concerned citizens at the local level, in everyday conversations and daily routines. This is one of the reasons why Fridays for Future is such a success story, and it was the starting point for our initiative to co-develop new forms of climate activism with coastal dwellers.
In this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen,... more In this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen, a huge bay at the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. To write about atmospheres means evoking a specific forcefield, which is different from observing and analyzing an object from a distance. In the first part, I write about my own experience of the coastal atmosphere by "looking around rather than ahead," as Tsing (2015) defined the art of noticing. Based on his paintings, on literature, and interviews, I show in the second part how a local artist, the painter Franz Radziwill, made the specific atmosphere of Dangast explicit. Finally, I follow a citizens' initiative on their way to preserve the specific atmosphere of this coastal village as an artists' place. In doing so, I provide a detailed insight into the atmospheres of democracy, which define how transitions take place and decisions are taken locally. In the conclusion, I argue that the focus on coastal atmospheres is a way to transcend the boundaries between nature and culture and to undermine the teleological argument of growth and development which more often than not shape coastal politics.
Journal for Environmental Law and Policy 1/2011, 1-15, 2011
In this article, we discuss the advisory capacity of climate science for political and societal d... more In this article, we discuss the advisory capacity of climate science for political and societal decisions. To provide options, open up perspectives and enhance the understanding for the dynamics of climate is a task we name climate services. After a general discussion, experiences of providing these services on a regional and local scale – Northern Germany, the metropolitan area of Hamburg and the Baltic Sea Basin – during the last few years is reviewed.Key components of this regional climate service is the establishment of a regional climate office, of regional IPCC-like assessments of knowledge about regional and local climate change, and detailed homogeneous data sets describing changing weather statistics (i.e., climate) in past decades and in perspectives for the next several decades.
Vor der Franzosischen Revolution ging an alle Gemeinden, Dorfer und Stadte in Frankreich ein Frag... more Vor der Franzosischen Revolution ging an alle Gemeinden, Dorfer und Stadte in Frankreich ein Fragebogen, in den sie eintragen konnten, unter welchen Bedingungen sie lebten, welche Steuern sie zu zahlen hatten und was sie dringend brauchten. Die Liste der Beschwerden war lang und ein- drucklich, schließlich litt man unter der Willkur des Adels, es gab Hunger, und die Infrastrukturen ließen zu wünschen ubrig. Aus diesen Beschwer- deheften entstand eine vollstandige und buchstablich zu verstehende Geo- Grafie des Landes. Daran erinnert Bruno Latour in seinem Buch 'Das terres- trische Manifest' aus aktuellem Anlass. Was wurde heute in einem solchen Beschwerdeheft stehen, wenn danach gefragt wurde, was es braucht, um ein gutes Leben zu fuhren? Ein gutes Leben im Sinne von klimafreundlich, erdverbunden und dennoch weltoffen? Gerade vor dem Hintergrund des Aufstiegs von Populismus und Trumps Ausstieg aus dem Klimavertrag von Paris gewinnt diese Frage an Relevanz. Weder Brexit, America First noch Heimattumelei sind eine gesunde Reaktion auf den Stress, den die globalen Probleme soziale Ungleichheit, Migration und Klimawandel verursachen.
Abstract
This article addresses the appropriate place for and design of climate services drawing... more Abstract This article addresses the appropriate place for and design of climate services drawing upon a case study of three different forms of climate service delivery in a coastal landscape in Northern Germany. Each of these forms addresses different audiences and provides different types of knowledge about climate change and a different orientation toward policy support. The three-part case study includes a regional, a municipal and a social climate service. Drawing upon this comparative, case-based research, I develop the idea of ‘slowing down climate services’, based on the ‘slow science manifesto’ introduced by the science philosopher Isabelle Stengers, by postnormal science and by political ecology as suggested by Bruno Latour. How does climate change become a matter of concern? Slowing down climate services means following the social life of scientific facts, engaging with the public and exploring ways to improve democratic and place-based decision making. I argue that there is an urgent need to overcome the big science orientation of climate services and to add what Stengers calls ‘public intelligence’, the integration of a sense of place and of the social, cultural, political and other performative aspects of climate change in specific landscapes. Keywords: slow science; postnormal science; political ecology; matters of concern
Greschke, H. and J. Tischleer (eds.) Grounding global climate change, 2015
There is more at stake in the Anthropocene than a simple addition of natural sciences and those c... more There is more at stake in the Anthropocene than a simple addition of natural sciences and those concerned with the anthropos. It is not sufficient to identify planetary boundaries, tipping points and limits of growth from a scientific perspective in order to successfully implement sustainable development or effective climate politics. We have to take into account the double challenge of global change, which affects our environment as well as our intellectual dispositions.
in: Howard, P., Thompson, I. and E. Waterton (eds) The Routledge Companion to Landcape Studies. London, New York: Routledge, 2nd edition, pp. 62-73, 2019
Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climat... more Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climate. This paper analyses how climate change is emerging as a matter of concern in the public spheres of Bergen, and interprets how this concern is affecting Bergen’s identity, with implications for the city’s climate risk governance. Historically, Bergen has a strong identity as Europe’s rainiest city, manifested in its cultural and social life. In the past 15 years, Bergen’s identity has been shifting from a ‘weather city’ to a ‘climate city’. This paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews and document analysis to map this shift as co-produced by certain social and natural events and processes; told as narratives of change. This identity shift is creating surprising hybrid representations of climate that are locally meaningful, shaped as much by Bergen’s cultural weatherworld as by incoming ideas of climate change. These representations influence Bergen’s attitudes towards climate risk governance, and may extend influence to global scales via climate city networks. This identity shift also moves the timeframe of risk governance. As a weather city, risks were implicit to the city’s heritage and peoples’ lived experience. But as a climate city, risks are predicted, to foresee and prevent impacts. Critically employing co-production as an analytical lens can help us understand the multiple facets to cities’ climate risk governance, including the role of culture and identity.
In this introduction, we situate the topic of this Special Issue on 'narratives of change' in the... more In this introduction, we situate the topic of this Special Issue on 'narratives of change' in the scholarly literature about how we inform climate risk governance, including through climate services. We argue that many places experience a persistent mismatch between predominantly science-based and technical framings of climatic risk on the one hand, and the place-based un-derstandings of climate extremes and responses of people living in these places on the other. We introduce the case studies presented in this issue and highlight their common focus on 'narratives of change' as one missing link in climate governance. Narratives of change address the past, present and future of a specific place understood as a weather-world, adding a cultural dimension to climate change experienced as a succession of weather and seasons. We focus on memories of extreme weather events and how people coped with them, in order to improve climate gov-ernance under future climatic change. We argue that attention to local narratives expands the scope of issues covered by climate information and improves its integration into social and cultural life. We offer up seven lessons for why it is important to incorporate narratives in climate governance and suggest some creative methods for doing so. Post-normal science, art-science cooperation, and the inclusion of the humanities mark the difference that the individual contributions make to the literature about climate governance and democratic decision-making. 1. Narratives and climate risk governance "We tell ourselves stories in order to live", the writer Joan Didion (2009, 11) famously stated. "We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices". What kind of stories do we tell about a changing climate, about extreme weather, rising sea level or changes in the seasons? Which story is the most workable to locally make sense of a global phenomenon and its effects? In this special issue, we bring together place-based stories about climate change with scientific information. Climate change is materializing locally in different ways, both as a change of weather and a change of politics. Climate change already plays a role in shifting governance and decision-making regimes in all of the places discussed in this special issue, yet none could claim to have made their endangered communities 'climate proof'. The articles in this issue argue for the inclusion of local narratives of change, alongside climate science, for a broader and critical understanding of climate risk governance. Local narratives serve to improve knowledge of the impacts of climatic change (the problem framing), introduce local ways of relating to and coping with these changes, and root https://doi.
After the Paris Agreement, the transition towards a carbon free society necessitates new forms of... more After the Paris Agreement, the transition towards a carbon free society necessitates new forms of collaboration between climate science and society. In my article, I argue that the increasing participation of disciplines from the humanities represent a cultural turn in climate risk gov-ernance. At the example of my anthropological case study at the Northern German coastline, I show that the co-development of place-based climate services for action means a challenge to the science-based definition of climate change and the resulting problem-solving strategies. Climate change materializes in form of extreme weather events, changes in the seasons and sea level rise. Local narratives represent these changes, expand the problem definition of climate change and express the multiple entanglements of weather, climate and society. Past flood disasters and interactions with the sea are presented in different configurations of time and space that put emerging forms of climate services into context. Narratives of change serve as a localization device and as starting point for the co-development of climate services for action. Collaborations between science and humanities on the one hand, and between researchers and local actors on the other are an open-ended process. In form of a field report, I identify diverse narratives of change and first steps towards the co-development of new forms of climate services. At the example of a scenario workshop, I describe local visions of climate risk governance, with climate researchers as facilitators and moderators of public forums motivated for action. This essay provides an anthropological insight into this process and details the procedures of emerging collaborations, making use of field notes, anthropological self-reflection and narrative theory.
Pastoral landscapes are mostly located in agriculturally marginalised areas such as mountain upla... more Pastoral landscapes are mostly located in agriculturally marginalised areas such as mountain uplands or sandy heathlands. For this reason they have usually not undergone the processes of intensification, enclosure and specialisation characteristic of urbanised core agricultural areas, and as a result they often involve complex forms of agriculture that spatially and temporally interweave grazing, cultivation (e.g. fodder) and extensive agro-forestry (e.g. fruit and nuts). They are therefore also often linked to customary ways of life and agricultural practices such as commoning and other collective activities that do not serve exclusively economic profit motives. Pastoral landscapes as forms of cultural practices often produce and conserve biologically diverse and unique environments. Unfortunately, however, the economic marginalisation of these pastoral areas means that they have become vulnerable to depopulation and abandonment due to poor social and physical infrastructure (schools, roads), and have become co-dependent on supplementary economic activities (construction, food processing).
Gegenstand dieser Arbeit sind die Arbeiten zweier verschiedener, gle... more Gegenstand dieser Arbeit sind die Arbeiten zweier verschiedener, gleichwohl verwandter Disziplinen zum gleichen Untersuchungsgebiet, der Schweizer Volkskunde und der amerikanischen "cultural anthropology" zum Schweizer Alpenraum. Anlaß hierfür sind die Forschungen einiger amerikanischer Ethnologen zu Beginn der siebziger Jahre in der Schweiz, vornehmlich im Kanton Wallis, dem bis dahin fast alleinigen "Revier" der Schweizer Volkskundler.
O presente livro constitui o segundo volume de um conjunto de publicações que acolhe os contrib... more O presente livro constitui o segundo volume de um conjunto de publicações que acolhe os contributos de investigadores participantes nos Encontros Interdisciplinares sobre a Matéria do Património. Trata-se um programa de discussões nascido em 2002 por iniciativa da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa. Este volume é um recurso comparativo de reflexão para ajudar ao esclarecimento de questões que hoje confrontam investigadores e de técnicos envolvidos com matérias do património, e cujo trabalho se vê condicionado por novas realidades impostas por legislação nova e solicitações institucionais multiplicadas.
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Papers by Werner Krauß
kannten. Das liegt daran, dass sie als Landschaften von Menschen bewohnt, gestaltet und verwaltet werden, und dass sie eine Geschichte haben, in der Naturgeschichte und die Geschichte der Menschen schwer zu trennen sind. Hier kommen die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften ins Spiel. Die Ethnologie und andere Disziplinen, die ethnographisch arbeiten, praktizieren im Gegensatz zum ›remote sensing‹ der Klimaforschung, also der Wahrnehmung aus großer Distanz, teilnehmende Beobachtung auf Augenhö-
he, sozusagen ein ›close sensing‹, mit Hilfe von allen Sinnen (→ Ethnologische Klimawandelforschung). Die ethnologische Erforschung von Landschaften hat ein Klima zum Gegenstand, das als Gegenstand der Sorge und Verantwortung in vielfältiger Weise lokalisiert und materialisiert ist (Krauß 2009).
This article addresses the appropriate place for and design of climate services drawing upon a case study of three different forms of climate service delivery in a coastal landscape in Northern Germany. Each of these forms addresses different audiences and provides different types of knowledge about climate change and a different orientation toward policy support. The three-part case study includes a regional, a municipal and a social climate service. Drawing upon this comparative, case-based research, I develop the idea of ‘slowing down climate services’, based on the ‘slow science manifesto’ introduced by the science philosopher Isabelle Stengers, by postnormal science and by political ecology as suggested by Bruno Latour. How does climate change become a matter of concern? Slowing down climate services means following the social life of scientific facts, engaging with the public and exploring ways to improve democratic and place-based decision making. I argue that there is an urgent need to overcome the big science orientation of climate services and to add what Stengers calls ‘public intelligence’, the integration of a sense of place and of the social, cultural, political and other performative aspects of climate change in specific landscapes.
Keywords:
slow science; postnormal science; political ecology; matters of concern
as a result they often involve complex forms of agriculture that spatially and temporally interweave grazing, cultivation (e.g. fodder) and extensive agro-forestry (e.g. fruit and nuts). They are therefore also often linked to customary ways of life and agricultural practices such as commoning and other collective activities that do not serve exclusively economic profit motives. Pastoral landscapes as forms of cultural practices often produce and conserve biologically diverse and unique environments.
Unfortunately, however, the economic marginalisation of these pastoral areas means that they have become vulnerable to depopulation and abandonment due to poor social and physical infrastructure (schools, roads), and have become co-dependent on supplementary economic
activities (construction, food processing).
kannten. Das liegt daran, dass sie als Landschaften von Menschen bewohnt, gestaltet und verwaltet werden, und dass sie eine Geschichte haben, in der Naturgeschichte und die Geschichte der Menschen schwer zu trennen sind. Hier kommen die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften ins Spiel. Die Ethnologie und andere Disziplinen, die ethnographisch arbeiten, praktizieren im Gegensatz zum ›remote sensing‹ der Klimaforschung, also der Wahrnehmung aus großer Distanz, teilnehmende Beobachtung auf Augenhö-
he, sozusagen ein ›close sensing‹, mit Hilfe von allen Sinnen (→ Ethnologische Klimawandelforschung). Die ethnologische Erforschung von Landschaften hat ein Klima zum Gegenstand, das als Gegenstand der Sorge und Verantwortung in vielfältiger Weise lokalisiert und materialisiert ist (Krauß 2009).
This article addresses the appropriate place for and design of climate services drawing upon a case study of three different forms of climate service delivery in a coastal landscape in Northern Germany. Each of these forms addresses different audiences and provides different types of knowledge about climate change and a different orientation toward policy support. The three-part case study includes a regional, a municipal and a social climate service. Drawing upon this comparative, case-based research, I develop the idea of ‘slowing down climate services’, based on the ‘slow science manifesto’ introduced by the science philosopher Isabelle Stengers, by postnormal science and by political ecology as suggested by Bruno Latour. How does climate change become a matter of concern? Slowing down climate services means following the social life of scientific facts, engaging with the public and exploring ways to improve democratic and place-based decision making. I argue that there is an urgent need to overcome the big science orientation of climate services and to add what Stengers calls ‘public intelligence’, the integration of a sense of place and of the social, cultural, political and other performative aspects of climate change in specific landscapes.
Keywords:
slow science; postnormal science; political ecology; matters of concern
as a result they often involve complex forms of agriculture that spatially and temporally interweave grazing, cultivation (e.g. fodder) and extensive agro-forestry (e.g. fruit and nuts). They are therefore also often linked to customary ways of life and agricultural practices such as commoning and other collective activities that do not serve exclusively economic profit motives. Pastoral landscapes as forms of cultural practices often produce and conserve biologically diverse and unique environments.
Unfortunately, however, the economic marginalisation of these pastoral areas means that they have become vulnerable to depopulation and abandonment due to poor social and physical infrastructure (schools, roads), and have become co-dependent on supplementary economic
activities (construction, food processing).
Jahre in der Schweiz, vornehmlich im Kanton Wallis, dem bis dahin fast alleinigen "Revier" der Schweizer Volkskundler.
Este volume é um recurso comparativo de reflexão para ajudar ao esclarecimento de questões que hoje confrontam investigadores e de técnicos envolvidos com matérias do património, e cujo trabalho se vê condicionado por novas realidades impostas por legislação nova e solicitações institucionais multiplicadas.