Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: The anthropology of climate change : six millennia of study of the relationship between climate and society / Michael R. Dove -- Part I: Continuities. Climate theory (Airs, waters, places / Hippocrates ; On the laws in their relation to the nature of the climate / Charles de Secondat Montesquieu) ; Beyond the Greco-Roman tradition (The Muqaddimah : an introduction to history / Ibn Khaldûn ; The jungle and the aroma of meats : an ecological theme in Hindu medicine / Francis Zimmermann) ; Ethno-climatology (Concerning weather signs / Theophrastus ; Gruff boreas, deadly calms : a medical perspective on winds and the Victorians / Vladimir Janković) -- Part II: Societal and environmental change. Environmental determinism (Nature, rise, and spread of civilization / Friedrich Ratzel ; Environment and culture in the Amazon Basin : an appraisal of the theory of environmental determinism / Betty J. Meggers) ; Climate change and societal collapse (Management for extinction in Norse Greenland / Thomas H. McGovern ; What drives societal collapse? / Harvey Weiss and Raymond Bradley) ; Climate events as social crucibles (Natural disaster and political crisis in a Polynesian society : an exploration of operational research / James Spillius ; Drought as a "revelatory crisis" : an exploration of shifting entitlements and hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana / Jacqueline S. Solway) -- Part III: Vulnerability and control. Culture and control of climate (Rain-shrines of the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia / Elizabeth Colson ; El Nin̈o, early Peruvian civilization, and human agency : some thoughts from the Lurin Valley / Richard L. Burger) ; Climatic disasters and social marginalization (Katrina : the disaster and its doubles / Nancy Scheper-Hughes ; "Nature", "culture" and disasters : floods and gender in Bangladesh / Rosalind Shaw) -- Part IV: Knowledge and its circulation. Emic views of climatic perturbation/disaster (Typhoons on Yap / David M. Schneider ; The politics of place : inhabiting and defending glacier hazard zones in Peru's Cordillera Blanca / Mark Carey) ; Co-production of knowledge in climatic and social histories (Melting glaciers and emerging histories in the Saint Elias mountains / Julie Cruikshank ; The making and unmaking of rains and reigns / Todd Sanders) ; "Friction" in the global circulation of climate knowledge (Transnational locals : Brazilian experiences of the climate regime / Myanna Lahsen ; Channeling globality : the 1997-98 El Nin̈o climate event in Peru / Kenneth Broad and Ben Orlove).

The contemporary field of research and policy on climate change is dominated by a presentist bias, which ignores insights from millennia of scholarly attention to the relationship between climate and society. This volume seeks to redress this bias by reprinting studies of the anthropology of climate and climate change from early 20th-century to early 21st-century Anthropology, including some classical works that have influenced anthropological thinking about climate. These studies reflect the unique contribution that Anthropology can make to the field of climate change, through study of (1) historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climate perturbation and change, (2) the impact from and response to climate change at the local, community level, (3) the impact on global debates about climate change from North-South post-colonial histories, and (4) the social dimensions of climate change science. Covers the historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climate change, including the impact and response to climate change at the local level; Discusses the impact on global debates about climate change from North-South post-colonial histories and the social dimensions of the science of climate change. Includes coverage of topics such as environmental determinism, climatic events as social catalysts, climatic disasters and societal collapse, and ethno-meteorology. Available as an e-text and on CourseSmart. An ideal text for courses in climate change, human/cultural ecology, environmental anthropology and archaeology, disaster studies, environmental sciences, science and technology studies, history of science, and conservation and development studies.--

Michael R. Dove is Margaret K. Musser Professor of Social Ecology, Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, and Coordinator of the joint doctoral program in anthropology and environmental studies, Yale University. He is the author of numerous books and papers on the anthropology of conservation and development. His research focuses on the environmental relations of local communities, especially in South and Southeast Asia, where he has been working for nearly forty years. He has spent more than a dozen years in the field during this period, carrying out long-term research on human ecology in Borneo and Java, developing government research capacity in Indonesia, and advising the Pakistan Forest Service on social forestry policies.