While structuring understandings, experience and responses to phenomena such as climate and climate change, cultural ideas may nonetheless remain tacit and transparent to speakers and their interlocuters Quinn Of course, cultures cannot be defined in line with national borders; in addition, multiple cultures may operate within a given place at different social and geographical scales Hulme In approaching culture, we envision this in a fragmented sense, accessible by different groups.
Though climate trends are more or less beyond the scope of the lay observer, climate change has permeated the spaces of the everyday in ways that are highly politicised and contested, and which support individual, collective and institutional responses Brace and Geoghegan Such knowledge is culturally situated and relational; that is, climate change becomes significant for individuals in relation to other kinds of environmental and culturally salient issues rather than as an issue in itself Clifford and Travis ; Boykoff et al.
Consequently, a growing body of studies mainly from within cultural geography, anthropology and sociology, have sought to examine the climate-relevant understandings and responses of individuals and communities in different places for example, Barnes and Dove ; Adger et al. Other scholars have sought to problematise the common notion of everyday life, upon which so much cultural analysis is based.
Lippuner remarks on the difficulties of observing the everyday, commenting that it comprises an idealised construction for the purposes of observing culture on the ground, in which the everyday approximates to some kind of actual material reality.
Contrary to its repetitious, settled nature, Fiske notes the epistemic volatility and ephemerality of everyday life. Meanwhile, Kothari and Arnall suggest that as a hyper-cultural space, the everyday implicitly brackets out nature and marginalises the non-human.
In addition, the everyday is preoccupied with the here-and-now, rather than being future-oriented in ways commensurate with environmental issues cf. Maniates While the everyday remains a contested space, scholars have remarked on the importance of the everyday as a site where cultural ideas and practices are normalised and remain unquestioned Bourdieu Everyday practices can conceal patterns of inequality and oppression that are taken for granted De Certeau MacGregor discusses how dominant neoliberal forms of everyday climate-relevant practice obscure alternative forms of lived experience and understandings that diverge from constructions of the ideal neoliberal citizen-consumer.
Other work has also shown how climate-relevant relationships between knowledge, practice and everyday spaces strategically attribute responsibility for addressing environmental problems Bee et al. It is therefore through the lens of everyday life that the politics and power relations of culture are exposed Gram-Hanssen Conflicts between expert and more colloquial perspectives underline the importance of considering the filtering effects of local context and experience when communicating about climate change Wolf and Moser While weather and climate remain categorically different phenomena, sensory experience of weather is a primary way in which people come to know climate Hulme ; Leyshon ; Knebusch ; Adger et al.
Extreme weather events, seasonal changes and related changes in the physical landscape, flora and fauna indicate climate changes for lay observers, though weather is always in flux Hulme Studies have documented accuracy in lay observations of precipitation over time Chaudhary et al. Experience of weather and its material and psychological effects condition individual and collective responses and adjustments to atmosphere and climate in culturally and spatially situated ways that become relevant and routinised in the everyday de Vet ; Ingold People may also know climate in other ways, including the media Boykoff et al.
For example, daily mobility decisions for example, transport modes, travel times and routes are affected by meteorological parameters, thereby facilitating and constraining daily routines and influencing climate understandings Kothari and Arnall In summary, we approach everyday understandings of climate-relevant issues as cultural phenomena, whereby culture is instantiated in communication as a form of cultural practice.
In accordance with a cyclic, mutually constitutive approach to climate as a cultural phenomenon, these cannot be separated and can be observed in accounts of material conditions and situated life experiences such as commuting, work and leisure, that both determine those practices and concomitantly shape climate understandings on the basis of that locally grounded, culturally rich experience Clifford and Travis ; Brace and Geoghegan ; Geoghegan and Leyson ; Rudiak-Gould We investigate accounts of everyday climate relevance in three culturally diverse emerging economies: Brazil, South Africa and China.
These were chosen because carbon emissions are set to rise significantly in these countries as a consequence of accelerating economic development Hallding et al. Wider cultural change, for example, through economic development and industrialisation, can lead to lifestyles becoming more energy- and resource-intensive Wolf and Moser In addition, each country faces significant climate change risks and other environmental issues; in South Africa, climate change is expected to lead to higher temperatures and drier landscapes, along with more frequent extreme weather events, including heatwaves and drought Ziervogel et al.
Brazil faces unprecedented deforestation and species loss in the Amazon Basin, as a consequence of government policy to convert natural ecosystems to agricultural land, and intensification of land use Lambin et al. The north-east of the country is perennially subject to low rainfall and drought, and projected to increase in frequency and severity in the future Bedran-Martins et al. Meanwhile, the scale and rapidity of industrial development within China has created an array of environmental and climate change—related risks, including land degradation Zhang et al.
Insights into everyday understandings of climate change and environmental issues in economically transitioning cultures can yield valuable insights on factors that might facilitate or obstruct climate change engagement.
For example, a lack of response to climate change may be due to wider cultural issues linked to wider issues of culture, identity and lifestyle rather than a lack of concern Norgaard ; Howell The environmental sustainability of a society requires the coordination of a society at multiple levels, including its citizens Adger et al. Emerging economies represent important, but under-researched economic and cultural contexts in relation to climate change Hallding et al.
Conversely, emissions are predicted to substantially increase in emerging economies Hallding et al. This also follows Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, which highlights the importance for governments to generate the capacity for citizens to engage with climate change and support wider action in the course of their daily lives. While limiting generalisability across contexts, such approaches generate richer and more contextually detailed accounts of environmental engagement Hargreaves , as befitting cultural perspectives.
We also attempt to avoid the methodological individualism of other psychological approaches that neglect the wider sociocultural contexts that constrain climate-relevant understandings Batel et al. Cultural accounts also require an appreciation of the active, functional ways in which people construct and interpret climate change and their worlds more generally.
There is no straightforward window to describe reality as it is, whether through the framework of behaviours or practices. Accounts are inevitably subjective and positioned, representative of social performance rather than direct representations of the world as it is Potter Psychological accounts are less expressions of internalised mental states than culturally available ways of understanding the world Billig Our approach is restricted to an analysis of climate-relevant issues as raised by our participants, which balances more formalised scientific concepts of climate change against a recognition that, for non-experts, this topic area is not neatly delineated and may span multiple concerns.
Furthermore, our analytic materials were derived from a broader programme of work in which the focus was on environmentally sustainable lifestyles in the round. In this paper, we have identified cases deemed to be climate-relevant, either directly for example, perceptions of changing weather conditions or indirectly for example, concerns about localised air pollution and perceived responsibility for addressing this.
Based on our review of the literature, our research questions are as follows:. How do citizens in Brazil, South Africa and China understand climate change and other environmental issues in the contexts of their everyday lives? How are climate-relevant and environmental issues constructed in discourse in relation to wider cultural ideas with relevance to negotiating these issues? How do such accounts position speakers with reference to negotiating climate change and other environmental issues in daily life?
Fieldwork comprised semi-structured qualitative interviews with a range of citizens in each of the three countries studied. Interviews were designed broadly to elicit discussions regarding perceptions of and responses to environmental issues, including climate change.
Interviews in the three countries were conducted at periodic intervals between March and April A purposive sampling strategy was created to ensure that we spoke with a range of sociodemographically diverse participants in each country as was possible. To generate a range of environmental perspectives in each country, we recruited a subsample of citizens who were less environmentally engaged and a subsample who were more environmentally engaged. To recruit the latter subsample, we approached local environmental organisations and asked whether we could interview employees who were environmentally engaged.
Table 1 shows basic demographic details for each group. Interviews with more engaged participants took place in the country capital, Brasilia population 2. An advert for the study was circulated to all employees, which explicitly mentioned our interest in speaking with environmentally committed individuals as some members of staff were employed by WWF in non-environmental capacities. Fieldwork in China took place during March in the city of Shanghai on the eastern coast population As we were unable to secure the collaboration of an environmental organisation, both groups were recruited by two collaborators, a freelance ethnographer based in Shanghai and collaborators at Fudan University.
A range of environmentally committed citizens responded, principally environmental sector employees, volunteers and consultants. Following recruitment, citizens were invited to participate in an interview lasting up to 1.
In Brazil and South Africa, interviews with less engaged participants took place in interview rooms at the collaborating academic institutions and interviews with more engaged participants were conducted in private offices at WWF. In China, the majority of interviews took place in a rented meeting room in central Shanghai or at Fudan University.
However, due to the size of the city, some participants were unable to travel to this location or the collaborating institution and so we held interviews in other locations.
For the more engaged group, six interviews were conducted in private and secluded spaces in participant workplaces. Before each interview began, we obtained written informed consent from all participants. The interview team comprised a male researcher in South Africa, where interviews were conducted in English, and the same male researcher and different female translators in Brazil and China where interviews were conducted in the local language unless participants elected to speak in English.
Translators took an active part in the interviews, checking participant understanding, clarifying questions and responses and elaborating on cultural nuances, as opposed to simply translating questions and answers. A semi-structured interview approach was used King and Hugh-Jones , in which a standard question protocol was applied in each country, which also allowed for follow-up questions and orientation to topics of interest raised by participants see Supplementary Material.
This flexibility made the semi-structured method particularly suited to multisited, cross-cultural fieldwork Hagaman and Wutich , while also allowing for the generation of contextual detail McIntosh and Morse Interviews were audio-recorded and subsequently translated into English where appropriate and transcribed.
The interviewer also made written field notes. We used template analysis Brooks et al. Of particular interest were utterances referring to issues of relevance to the intersection of climate-relevant issues and everyday lifestyles.
The interview audio and texts were analysed using NVivo 11, supplemented by the written field notes. The interview extracts that appear below illustrate features of interest that may be applicable across more than one country. In such instances, we present a single extract and allude to its occurrence in other cultural contexts in the text. We now move on to discuss these accounts in more detail. In furnishing accounts of environmental issues in the context of their day-to-day lives, participants in all three countries rarely oriented explicitly to the topic of climate change spontaneously.
Environmental conditions analogous to climate change were mentioned though not categorised as such. In these descriptions of environmental conditions, the majority of participants referred to the local environment. Following Geoghegan and Leyson , weather and the physical landscape served as primary indicators of the state of the local environment.
In the following account from South Africa, the speaker does not mention weather, but describes how features of the local landscape had degenerated over time due to climatic change:. Adger et al. Participant [Transl. The few water that remains, people are polluting. The speaker discusses water as an environmental problem in Brazil, which is linked to a combination of cultural and natural antecedents, resulting in erratic rainfall and fluctuating river levels.
Climate-relevant issues are also conflated with other significant environmental issues, such as illegal logging and water polluting practices—suggesting that this may set people up to believe in the wrong or irrelevant solutions, or to feel disempowered for example, if environmental problems are caused by the actions of distant others, then there is nothing that can be done locally except to cope Wolf and Moser Perceptions of environmental problems were not constructed in terms of the issues themselves, but in terms of the spatial contexts associated with those problems.
Bickerstaff and Walker discuss public constructions of air pollution in which air pollution is legitimated in certain contexts. In the following example from China, it was felt that living in a city was inevitably associated with some level of pollution to be expected and to which citizens were implicitly required to adapt:. The bigger the city is, the serious the air pollution will be. Such accounts are important as they invoke cultural assumptions about everyday spaces in ways that construct environmental issues as normal.
Normalising environmental problems such as air pollution carries the risk that urban climate change and related impacts are likely to intensify as more people migrate to urban centres Harlan and Ruddell There was also evidence that despite the severity of some environmental risks, at the local level, it was the more conspicuous issues that were viewed as being most important. This is illustrated within the next extract, also from China, in which the problem of air pollution is acknowledged but contrasted favourably with other places, where air pollution is more serious.
The air pollution situation in Shanghai is okay, acceptable, but I think there are other issues when we take notice. For example, the streets in Shanghai is not that clean. I think people kind of ignore the issue or something.
The relative importance of environmental problems was also formulated by participants in other ways. While climate change was recognised as one of the most significant problems facing society, the importance of the local context meant that other issues could be viewed as more important.
Moreover, these perceptions of environmental conditions guided behavioural responses:. For example, everything today is related to climate change, carbon issues. The main issue maybe is climate change. So you have to - everybody would have to find - try to find the best solution to reuse, to not waste and all that.
So I think the issues depend a bit about the context, where you are, or the short-term problems, but I would say that these two issues are critical today in Brazil in general. Such examples are significant as they suggest that climate change may only resonate with citizens if they accord with locally significant problems.
While wider issues were occasionally acknowledged, citizens were typically oriented towards issues of local rather than global concern. This contrasts with previous research for example, Uzzell , which measured greater concern for global issues across a range of cultures.
While there were few notable differences between more and less environmentally engaged citizens, those who were more environmentally engaged tended to feel that there was little that they could do to make a difference to the environment through actions in their own lives, even at the local level.
Negotiating environmentally responsible lifestyles was conveyed as being emotionally draining at times, with little hope in trying to bring about change as an individual. In the next extract, an environmentally engaged participant in Brasilia discusses her sense of futility, fuelled by living in a country in which environmental issues are a low priority for government and for the population more generally:.
Participant [Direct]: No. Because even the people that work for it have a hard time. Me, myself, I will do it in a limited space at my house. Such accounts constructed everyday spaces as spaces of constraint, in which speakers were positioned as lacking the capacity to effect change due to a perceived lack of consensus among the wider public and governing institutions.
For those who were more environmentally committed, there was a frustration with the lack of ecological citizenship shown by the majority of the population. In the next extract from Brazil, the speaker talks about the ephemerality of felt responsibility for most citizens, manifested only at election time.
Conversely, environmental issues were everyday issues requiring consistent attention and action on the part of the public; though citizens failed to make the connection between their lifestyle practices and their damaging impacts day in and day out:. Do you feel responsible to do environmental things in your personal life?
Participant [Direct]: Yes. Of course. Not only during elections. Because in Brazil we have this strange phenomenon. After the elections the people used to, oh okay, I did my role, voting, okay.
Because we need citizenship during all the year, every day, every time. Importantly, vulnerability is not homogenous across populations, even within the same geographical areas.
Given the diversity of socio-economic and political situations in which people find themselves, vulnerability varies on both individual and collective levels. On how to think about vulnerability, also see Kelly and Adger, Researchers on global change processes have been discussing a variety of possible physical adaptations to manage such change processes. In places with low-lying lands close to the sea, such as in the delta region of Bangladesh, building breakwaters and extended embankments in order to prevent flooding is being considered [Ahmed et al.
Others propose change in land use in such areas, for example, from agriculture to fish farming, even if it remains unclear whether this kind of transformation may realistically be absorbed by sectors of the population that lack the capital resources needed for such innovations.
Other ways to absorb change may be best described in economic and social terms. People in the North African Sahel region, for instance, have responded to increased droughts by diversifying the use of land from irrigated cash crops to more enduring subsistence crops, and by out-migration to nearby cities to supplement incomes.
I am particularly interested in the diversity of ways of perceiving and relating to the beings and processes in the environment that may contribute to appropriately effective ways of adapting to drastic natural changes.
There are a number of ways of investigating the cultural conditions that are correlated with appropriate adaptation strategies. We may, for instance, consider research from sociology and social psychology on how people come to change their attitudes and behaviors See, e. We may, moreover, take into account the findings of historical ecology, which speak of very different value systems than those common in Western societies today.
One reason to pay attention to those findings is that they may give us insight into ways of lowering vulnerability based on a consideration of cultural perspectives held by peoples who, in their particular places, in their respective lands, have undergone drastic natural changes in the past.
I propose that, in the context of this article, we speak of culture as comprising the ways of living involving values, beliefs, practices, and material artefacts that condition the production and reproduction of tangible and intangible goods and services needed for the satisfactions of needs and wants.
No neat sectioning of cultures in the human population can be expected given the inter-relationship of human groupings in an increasingly globalizing context. Moreover, the any one set of values, beliefs, or practices common to any human group is mediated by power relations and not just the result of adaptation to objective conditions of the natural environment. Nonetheless, we may ask whether there are cultural patterns that constitute more, rather than less, adaptive ways of responding to drastic events involving non-human natural forces.
It ranges from environmental history, ecocriticism, and cultural studies to anthropology, sociology and social psychology. I do not attempt to summarize this literature here, but only intend to draw attention to the fact that consideration of ethics and values in relation to the diversity of ways of conceiving and living with impactful natural forces is relatively under-discussed.
Even with regard to such a prominent phenomenon as global climate change the discussion in philosophy of ethical responsibilities and appropriate attitudes and values is only beginning [Gardiner, ; Jamieson, ].
From time immemorial people have considered forces, such as the power of storms, of the sea, and of the earth, as endowed with particular self-identities. These perspectives were passed on from generation to generation in the form of sayings of the wise, popular stories, and religious practices. While it cannot be my aim to advocate the adoption of such beliefs and customs by contemporary people, I do think that the consideration of the idea of responsibility in relation to nature inherent in some such notions may be instructive for our present situation.
She retells stories about glaciers that pay attention and respond to human behaviours, such as speaking carelessly, spilling blood, making noise, or cooking with grease in their vicinity , pp. It has repeatedly been reported that after natural disasters all too often people continue with maladaptive patterns. For example, due to various social, geographical and economic factors such as economic and social marginalisation of certain sectors, or imposition by authoritarian regimes, or short term profit-driven motivations people may end up rebuilding in the same places and exposing themselves to the same risks as before Leroy, A recent case in point is the rebuilding of towns and villages along shallow seashores after the tsunami in Sumatra.
Notably, tourism-oriented towns are rebuilt in places where mangroves, which served as a sort of shield, formerly grew. As before, the hardship was due to by the fact that homes and businesses are located in flood-prone locations on flood plains and close to shorelines.
As noted, the explanation for the lack of adaptation in these cases must be sought in a diversity of factors, social, economic and political, but the failure to deploy more effective adaptation strategies even by individual citizens and communities in the richer countries of this planet also points toward a puzzling cultural inadequacy.
It seems that this is a sign either of a failure in the deployment, or in the development, of appropriate cultural resources. After carpool lanes were available, commuters were surveyed again and reported that flexibility prevented them from carpooling. Cultural and individual abilities and needs also influence contraceptive use. Population growth in India has in part been attributed to the importance placed on male children, creating a cultural need to have more children in order to increase the number of sons.
Individually people often consider the emotional value of children when determining how many children to have. However in some circumstances people consider the environmental effects as well.
For example, in Nepal if people felt that "environmental destruction had influenced their agricultural productivity [they] were more likely to use contraceptives," the researchers said.
Also working on this research were Susan Clayton, professor and chair of environmental studies, College of Wooster, and George S. Howard, professor of psychology, University of Notre Dame. Materials provided by Penn State. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Story Source: Materials provided by Penn State. Journal Reference : Janet K. Swim, Paul C.
Stern, Thomas J. Doherty, Susan Clayton, Joseph P.
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