How Climate Change Comes to Matter

The Communal Life of Facts

Candis Callison author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Duke University Press

Published:5th Dec '14

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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How Climate Change Comes to Matter cover

During the past decade, skepticism about climate change has frustrated those seeking to engage broad publics and motivate them to take action on the issue. In this innovative ethnography, Candis Callison examines the initiatives of social and professional groups as they encourage diverse American publics to care about climate change. She explores the efforts of science journalists, scientists who have become expert voices for and about climate change, American evangelicals, Indigenous leaders, and advocates for corporate social responsibility.

The disparate efforts of these groups illuminate the challenge of maintaining fidelity to scientific facts while transforming them into ethical and moral calls to action. Callison investigates the different vernaculars through which we understand and articulate our worlds, as well as the nuanced and pluralistic understandings of climate change evident in different forms of advocacy. As she demonstrates, climate change offers an opportunity to look deeply at how issues and problems that begin in a scientific context come to matter to wide publics, and to rethink emerging interactions among different kinds of knowledge and experience, evolving media landscapes, and claims to authority and expertise.

How Climate Change Comes to Matter is dense, intelligent, and thoroughly researched…. She presents an interesting conversation about climate change, rather than engaging in many of the typical debates one could read anywhere. Her unique perspective informs the content of the book and makes for an interesting read.” -- Jonathan Bond * Vancouver Weekly *
“... readers can reflect on the experimental methods used for public engagement and questions of media, politics, and scientific expertise that operate on shifting theoretical, empirical, and moral perspectives to help consider definitions of what climate change means. Recommended. Graduate students/faculty.” -- R. A. Delgado Jr. * Choice *
"This book is a marvel. It brings climate change research directly back into the folds of the anthropological tradition; and brings the anthropological tradition to the beating centers of climate change discourse. If you have never before had an interest in climate change, you will be spellbound by this ethnography. If you do have an interest in climate change, this book is essential." -- Elizabeth Marino * Anthropos *
"...a key work examining the wide variety of 'discourse coalitions' involved in climate communication. It is a magisterial treatment of the deep roots of contention in this momentous and unfolding story." -- Noel Salmond * Reading Religion *

ISBN: 9780822357872

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 454g

328 pages