Climates and Cultures

‘Climate’ is an old idea, but an idea which retains tremendous power, versatility and utility in today’s world.

For the Ancient Greeks, climate worked both as index and as agency , and this dual function has recurred throughout human cultural history and it works too in contemporary discourses about climate change.

Climates change physically, but climates can also change ideologically.  What climate means to different people in different places in different eras is not stable.

If culture is concerned with how human meaning, symbolism and practice take on substantive and material forms, then studying climate through culture is likely to be a fruitful activity.   This Major Work is a valuable synopsis of a diffuse discourse and captures some of the most important writing on climate and culture that has appeared since the 1980s.

It provides a structure within which the recently growing body of work in human geography, anthropology, sociology and religious studies can be placed.   Volume One:  Theorising Climate and Culture Volume Two:  The Agencies of Climate Volume Three:  Reading Climate and Culture in the Past Volume Four: Reading Climate and Culture in the Future Volume Five: Climate and Culture in Places Volume Six: Cultural Representations of Climate