- Summary
- Contents
- Subject index
Climate is an enduring idea of the human mind and also a powerful one. Today, the idea of climate is most commonly associated with the discourse of climate-change and its scientific, political, economic, social, religious and ethical dimensions. However, to understand adequately the cultural politics of climate-change it is important to establish the different origins of the idea of climate itself and the range of historical, political and cultural work that the idea of climate accomplishes. In Weathered: Cultures of Climate, distinguished professor Mike Hulme opens up the many ways in which the idea of climate is given shape and meaning in different human cultures – how climates are historicized, known, changed, lived with, blamed, feared, represented, predicted, governed and, at least putatively, re-designed.
Chapter 6: Blaming Climate
Blaming Climate
Introduction
One of the questions that the idea of climate provokes is the extent and nature of its role as a causal agent in the world. What physical and social phenomena are caused by climate and its changes? What sort of things can be ‘blamed’ on climate? And the enduring question ‘Why is “the Other” different?’ − to which the seductive explanatory power of climate to explain human difference has frequently been invoked. Sages, philosophers and public intellectuals have long deliberated these questions and the cultures into which they speak have frequently been influenced by the answers given. But the range of phenomena which are said to be caused by climate − or as understood more recently to be caused by climate-change ...
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