Category Archives: Climate Change

Climate Change

What does economic anthropology contribute to the understanding of climate change?

In this inaugural series of episodes for the Society for Economic Anthropology podcast Mergers & Acquisitions, economic and climate anthropologist Aneil Tripathy interviews the authors of the recent Economic Anthropology Symposium centering on the question of “what does economic anthropology contribute to the understanding of climate change?” These interviews discuss the essays in the journal and also extend into each author’s understanding of economic anthropology, our subdiscipline’s contribution to climate change, their careers, and the significance of the research that they do.

Check out the first episode with archaeologist Vernon Scarborough, and stay tuned for episodes with Pamela McElwee, Paige West, Thomas Reuter, and Michael Bollig.
 

Violence, Materiality and Adapting to Climate Change: A Conversation with Michael Bollig

In this fourth episode of Mergers & Acquisitions’ inaugural series on Economic Anthropology’s symposium issue on climate change, Aneil interviews Michael Bollig. Economic anthropology for Michael has always been closely linked with political ecology, both in his PhD work on violence in Northern Kenya and current research on large scale conservation projects in Namibia. They discuss Michael’s research, and highlight how economic anthropology allows individual and personal logics to be connected to macroeconomic systems. Thus, knowing political ecology but seeing things at the actor level is a great strength of economic anthropology. Michael and Aneil reflect on the effects of large scale conservation and what it means that climate change adaptation funds are set to overtake development funds across Africa. They end with a discussion on finding hope in humanity’s history of adapting to dramatic environmental change, how anthropologists can work in teams and across disciplines, as well as ways anthropologists can present alternative solutions to current macro scale problems such as climate change.
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Anthropological Insights To Help Avert Systemic Collapse: A Conversation With Thomas Reuter

In this third episode of Mergers & Acquisitions’ series on economic anthropology and climate change, Aneil interviews Thomas Reuter. Aneil and Thomas start their conversation with a reflection on economic anthropology as a critique of mainstream economics which through comparative study opens up alternative forms of economics. In responding to climate change, Thomas reflects on how we can use economic anthropology to give us an awareness that allows us to step back to see how current mainstream economic systems that dominate globally cause and further climate change.
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Economic Anthropology in Global Climate Change Policy: A Conversation with Pamela McElwee

Pam and Aneil dive into how her long-term fieldwork and study of forest policy and management in Vietnam informs and shapes Pam’s professional work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We discuss how to bring anthropological insights into the world of global climate change policy, how to navigate critical approaches and contributions to consensus knowledge, collaborating across disciplines and in teams. We also reflect on the meanings of equity, value, and justice in policy and market-based solutions as well as on how economic anthropologists can work to make sense of, change and inform important policy models.
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How Ancient Landscapes Can Help Us Respond to Climate Change: A Conversation with Vernon Scarborough

Aneil and Vern discuss economic anthropology, archaeological relevance to current climate change concerns, making linkages between past and present, sustainability, interactions between ancient people and their environments, and what we can learn from them, population dispersion, inequality, interdisciplinary decision-making, laughter, and the value of taking the long view.
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