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Climate, Capitalism and Communities

Climate, Capitalism and Communities

An Anthropology of Environmental Overheating

Edited by Astrid B. Stensrud and Thomas Hylland Eriksen

An anthropological perspective on the devastating environmental consequences of global capital's growth imperative.
Until now, the growing body of work on environmental anthropology has largely ignored the unavoidable impact of global capitalism on the environment and the extent to which capital itself is a key driver of climate change.

Climate, Capitalism and Communities focuses explicitly on that nexus, examining the injustices and inequalities - as well as the activist responses - that have arisen as a result, and the contradictions between the imperatives of exponential economic growth, and those of environmental sustainability, and society as a whole.

Bringing an innovative, ethnographic toolkit to bear on a crisis that is at once global and highly localised, the authors shift attention away from the consequences of climate change, to a focus on the social relations and power structures that continue to prevent effective action.

Astrid B. Stensrud is Associate Professor at the Department of Global Development and Planning, University of Agder. She is the co-editor of Climate, Capitalism and Communities (Pluto, 2019) and a contributor to Waterworlds (Berghahn, 2016) and Identity Destabilised (Pluto, 2016).

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He is the author of numerous classics of anthropology, including Small Places, Large Issues, Ethnicity and Nationalism and What is Anthropology?

'Presenting evidence from places as diverse as the Arctic, Mongolia and Peru, this volume testifies to the growing anthropological awareness of the link between global capitalism and climate change' - Hans A Baer, author of 'Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an Alternative World System' 'This excellent analysis of climate change and global 'overheating' is underpinned by studies that demonstrate how it is experienced in diverse cultural and geographical contexts. Every researcher, politician and activist seeking ways to avert ecological and social meltdown should read this book' - Veronica Strang, author of 'Water: Nature and Culture'
List of Figures
Preface
1. Introduction: Anthropological Perspectives on Global Economic and Environmental Crises in an Overheated World - Astrid B. Stensrud and Thomas Hylland Eriksen
2. The Political Economy of the Great Acceleration, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Anna Tsing
3. A Community on the Brink of Extinction? Ecological Crises and Ruined Landscapes in Northwest Greenland - Kirsten Hastrup
4. Sea Ice, Climate and Resources: The Changing Nature of Hunting Along Greenland's Northwest Coast - Mark Nuttall
5. Volatility: Understanding Global Capitalism and Climate Change Vulnerability in Mongolia - Andrei Marin
6. The Dark Side of Progress: The Intersections of Climate Change, Neoliberalism and Modernity in Peru - Astrid B. Stensrud
7. Puzzling Pieces and Situated Urgencies of Climate Change and Globalisation in the High Arctic: Three Stories from Qaanaaq - Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen and Janne Flora
8. Counting: Health Emergencies and the Constitution of Extractive Natures in Northern Loreto, Peru - María A. Guzmán-Gallegos
9. Expansive Capitalism, Climate Change and Global Climate Mitigation Regimes: A Triple Burden on Forest Peoples in the Global South - Harold Wilhite and Cecilia G. Salinas
10. Climate Change, Oceanic Sovereignties and Maritime Economies in the Pacific - Edvard Hviding
11. Islands of Hope and Despair: Scaling the Collapses and the Collapse of Scales - Frank Sejersen
12. Using a Glacier Website to Promote Action and Build Community: Engaged Anthropology in the Digital Age - Ben Orlove, Kerry Milch and Laura Uguccioni
Notes on Contributors
Index
Published by Pluto Press in Jul 2019
Paperback ISBN: 9780745339566
eBook ISBN: 9781786804877

135mm x 215mm