ANTH 266 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Adaptive Capacity, Thick Description, Instrumentalism
10 Feb 2019
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Document Summary
Anthropology can offer a valuable set of insights into the nexus of nature, culture, science, politics, and belief that constitutes climate change. Climate change is also about stories and images, myth and reality, knowledge and ignorance, humor and tragedy. Goal: to identify, integrate, and articulate the contributions that anthropological perspectives can bring to our understandings of and responses to climate change. Ethnography: the methodology that in many ways defines anthropology as a discipline. Thick description of people"s behavior and social relations. Research opens a window into how people"s everyday activities, relationships, and value systems react with changing environmental conditions. Understandings of key terms like climate can shift. Anthropological lens can shed light on how communities are already adapting to changing climatic conditions and how future adaptation initiatives may play out. Social patterns and processes emerge through time as people interact with the environment. Evidence of societies" abilities to accommodate climatic change with less radical adaptations.
