Meshworks and the Making of Climate Places in the European Alps
A Framework for Ethnographic Research on the Perceptions of Climate Change
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Abstract
Ethnographers studying the local dimensions of climate change find themselves confronted with a methodological problem: climate change is both an abstract concept and a locally present phenomenon, yet it does not emerge from lived experience. We tackle this problem by means of a research framework that combines discussions on place and Tim Ingold’s (2011) idea of a meshwork. This article is based on research on climate change perceptions in two Alpine communities, located in Bavaria (Germany) and South Tyrol (Italy), respectively. We show how a focus on climate knots and their meshworks allows the grasping, describing, and visualizing of the different dimensions of climate change in these two local settings. This framework, as we further show, helps to reveal social and cultural patterns and underlying structures.
Contributor Notes
Sophie Elixhauser is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She received an MA in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Munich and a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Aberdeen. She conducted field research in the Philippines and the Italian Alps, and long-term fieldwork in East Greenland. Her research interests include human-environmental relations, interpersonal communication, perception and movement, tourism, and climate change. In her postdoctoral project that formed part of the cooperative project “Regional Climates,” she explored perceptions of climate change and environmental changes in the Italian Alps. E-mail: s.elixhauser@abdn.ac.uk
Stefan Böschen is Professor for Technology and Society at HumTec, RWTH Aachen, Germany. He studied chemical engineering, philosophy, and sociology, and holds a diploma in chemical engineering, and a doctoral degree and habilitation in sociology. His current research focuses on the sociology of science, sociology of modernity, risk sociology, environmental research—with special emphasis on transdisciplinary and problem-oriented research—technology assessment, the analysis of risk politics, and risk communication. He was a principal investigator for the cooperative project “Regional Climates” (2010–2013), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. E-mail: stefan.boeschen@humtec.rwth-aachen.de
Katrin Vogel holds an MA in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Munich, and a doctoral degree from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. She taught anthropology at universities in Munich and Augsburg, and she conducted fieldwork in Spain, Venezuela, and Germany. From 2011–2015 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Environment Science Centre, University of Augsburg. Her research interests revolve around questions of climate change, sustainability, mobility, consumption, materiality, and gender. As part of the project team “Regional Climates,” she conducted fieldwork in the Bavarian Alps, Germany, focusing on local perceptions of climate change. E-mail: katrin.vogel@via-bayern.de