AbstractsAnthropology

In the more than two decades since the first international climate negotiations, many thinkers and actors have identified a divisive rift between ambitious language and binding agreements, between expertise and activism, information and engagement, abstract scientific knowledge and actionable policy agendas—in short, a gap between climate science and climate action. This thesis takes this observation as a starting point to ask what constitutes 'science,' and what is meant by 'action' in the realms of climate change research and activism. Moreover, what worlds of possibility are implicit in these understandings? What new conceptions of the human, the Earth and human-Earth relations does the gap between climate science and action produce? Calling into question how climate change challenges and exceeds conventional technical and conceptual frameworks, this thesis is an exploration of the anthropological stakes of climate change. One part literature-based research and another part fieldwork-based research, it takes as its concrete ethnographic object three programs of research in North America whose work situates them within the emergent and mercurial gap between climate science and climate action: the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), the Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy model project (DICE) and the Economics for the Anthropocene project (E4A). Located in the murky intermediate domain between scientific and managerial knowledge, these researchers are mid-range climate change problem solvers, who thrive among the assemblages of people, processes, tools, objects and events through which climate change knowledge is made actionable. Investigating the practical and conceptual details that make up their engagements with science, technology, policy and the public, this thesis examines how each project produces the very possibilities for politics and activism, human being and belonging, in an era of a changing global climate. Au cours des deux dernières décennies qui ont suivies les premières négociations internationales sur le climat, de nombreux penseurs et autres acteurs de la vie publique ont mis en évidence un écart entre des déclarations ambitieuses et des accords contraignants, entre expertise et activisme, entre la disponibilité de l'information et l'engagement, entre le savoir scientifique abstrait et des programmes politiques concrets—bref, un décalage entre les sciences du climat et l'action sur le climat. Utilisant cette observation comme point de départ, ce mémoire explore ce qui constitue « la science » et que signifie « agir » dans les deux contextes de la recherche et de l'activisme sur le climat. Par ailleurs, quels mondes de possibilité se cachent, implicites, dans ces compréhensions de la science et de l'action ? Quelles nouvelles conceptions de l'humain, de la Terre et des relations entre la Terre et les humains sont produites par le décalage entre la science du climat et l'action sur le climat ? S'interrogeant sur les différentes façons par lesquelles le changement climatique… Advisors/Committee Members: Ronald Niezen (Internal/Supervisor).