Skip to main content

Engaging with Environmental Transformation in Oceania

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses

Abstract

This chapter sets out to provide a framework for this collection on environmental transformations and cultural responses in Oceania. In line with theoretical approaches that challenge the distinction between “environment/nature” and “human/culture”, we advocate for an anthropology that is sensitive to ontological dimensions in order to advance our understanding of the entanglement and mutual construction of categories that are often perceived as separate. We propose a broad conceptualisation of “environment(s)” to encourage specification of what is understood as “environment” in accord with respective contexts and situations. We further point to translation and reception processes involved in transforming social worlds. This book is based on original work from German scholars and links into the long-standing German tradition of anthropological research in Oceania.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Barnett, Jon, and John Campbell. 2010. Climate Change and Small Island States: Power, Knowledge and the South Pacific. London: Earthscan. http://www.gbv.de/dms/bowker/toc/9781844074945.pdf.

  • Belliger, Andrea, and David J. Krieger. 2006. ANThology. Ein einführendes Handbuch zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie. Bielefeld: Transcript.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blaser, Mario. 2009. The Threat of the Yrmo: The Political Ontology of a Sustainable Hunting Program. American Anthropologist 111(1): 10–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casimir, Michael J. 2008. The Mutual Dynamics of Cultural and Environmental Change. An Introductory Essay. In Culture and the Changing Environment: Uncertainty, Cognition, and Risk Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Michael J. Casimir, 1–58. New York: Berghan Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Costa, Luiz, and Carlos Fausto. 2010. The Return of the Animists: Recent Studies of Amazonian Ontologies. Religion and Society 1: 179–200. doi:10.3167/arrs.2010.010107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crate, Susan A., and Mark Nuttall. 2009. Introduction: Anthropology and Climate Change. In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, ed. Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall, 9–38. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crook, Anthony, and Peter Rudiak-Gould. Forthcoming. Nothing There Atoll? Farewell to the Carteret Islands. In Appropriating Climate Change: Pacific Reception of a Scientific Prophecy, ed. Anthony Crook and Peter Rudiak-Gould. Warsaw: De Gruyter Open.

    Google Scholar 

  • Czarniawska, Barbara, and Guja Sevón. 2005. Translation Is a Vehicle, Imitation Its Motor, and Fashion Sits at the Wheel. In Global Ideas: How Ideas, Objects and Practices Travel in a Global Economy, ed. Barbara Czarniawska and Guja Sevón, 7–14. Malmö: Liber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Descola, Philippe. 2005. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Human Natures. Social Anthropology 17(2): 145–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2011. L’écologie des Autres. L’anthropologie et la Question de la Nature. Paris: Éditions Quae.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diemberger, Hildegard, Kirsten Hastrup, Simon Schaffer, et al. 2012. Communicating Climate Knowledge. Current Anthropology 53(2): 226–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Escobar, Arturo. 1999. Whose Knowledge, Whose Nature? Biodiversity, Conservation, and the Political Ecology of Social Movements. Journal of Political Ecology 5: 53–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gesing, Friederike, Johannes Herbeck, and Silja Klepp, eds. 2014. Denaturalizing Climate Change: Migration, Mobilities and Space. Bremen: Artec.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halbmayer, Ernst. 2012. Debating Animism, Perspectivism and the Construction of Ontologies. Indiana 29: 9–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hastrup, Kirsten. 2009. Waterworlds: Framing the Question of Social Resilience. In The Question of Resilience: Social Responses to Climate Change, ed. Kirsten Hastrup, 11–30. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Heekeren, Deborah. 2012. The Shark Warrior of Alewai. A Phenomenology of Melanesian Identity. Wantage: Sean Kingston Pub.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henare, Amiria. 2007. Taonga Mäori: Encompassing Rights and Property in New Zealand. In Thinking Through Things. Theorising Artefacts Ethnografically, ed. Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell, 47–67. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell (eds.). 2007. Thinking Through Things. Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holbraad, Martin. 2013. Turning a Corner: Preamble for “The relative native” by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(3): 469–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hulme, Michael. 2010. Cosmopolitan Climates: Hybridity, Foresight and Meaning. Theory, Culture & Society 27(2–3): 267–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hviding, Edvard. 1996. Guardians of Marovo Lagoon: Practice, Place, and Politics in Maritime Melanesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, Tim. 1992. Culture and the Perception of the Environment. In Bush Base: Forest Farm. Culture, Environment and Development, ed. Elisabeth Croll and David Parkin, 39–56. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2000. The Perception of the Environment. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. Dreaming of Dragons: On the Imagination of Real Life. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19: 734–752.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacka, Jerry. 2009. Global Averages, Local Extremes: The Subtleties and Complexities of Climate Change in Papua New Guinea. In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, ed. Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall, 197–207. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keesing, Roger M. 1982. Kwaio Religion. The Living and the Dead in a Solomon Island Society. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leduc, Timothy B. 2014. Climates of Ontological Change: Past Wisdom in Current Binds? WIREs Climate Change 5(2): 247–260.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lipset, David. 2011. The Tides: Masculinity and Climate Change in Coastal Papua New Guinea. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17(1): 20–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, Keir. 2013. The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots. Custom and Conflict in East New Britain. New York/Oxford: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, Donald R., Colin Thor West, and Timothy J. Finan. 2009. Introduction to “In Focus: Global Change and Adaptation in Local Places”. American Anthropologist 111(3): 271–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orlove, Benjamin. 2009. The Past, the Present and Some Possible Futures of Adaptation. In Adapting to Climate Change: Thresholds, Values, Governance, ed. W. Neil Adger, Irene Lorenzoni, and Karen L. O’Brien, 131–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Nicole, and Kenneth Broad. 2009. Climate and Weather Discourse in Anthropology. In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Determinism to Uncertain Futures. From Encounters to Actions, ed. Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reed, Adam. 2007. ‘Smuk is king’: The Action of Cigarettes in a Papua New Guinea prison. In Thinking Through Things. Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically, ed. Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell, 47–67. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rudiak-Gould, Peter. 2011. Climate Change and Anthropology. The Importance of Reception Studies. Anthropology Today 27(2): 9–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. Climate Change and Tradition in a Small Island State: The Rising Tide. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. The Influence of Science Communication on Indigenous Climate Change Perception: Theoretical and Practical Implications. Human Ecology 42(1): 75–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salmond, Amiria. 2014. Transforming Translations (Part 2): Addressing Ontological Alterity. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1): 155–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, Michael W. 2007. The Severed Snake Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strathern, Marilyn. 1980. No Nature, No Culture: The Hagen Case. In Nature, Culture, Gender, ed. Carol P. MacCormack and Marylin Strathern, 174–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1998. Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4(3): 469–488.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. AND. Manchester Papers in Social Anthropology 7. http://abaete.wikia.com/wiki/(anthropology)_AND_(science)_(E._Viveiros_de_Castro).

  • ———. 2013. The Relative Native. Trans. Julia Sauma and Martin Holbraad. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(3): 473–502.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warrick, Olivia C. 2011. Local Voices, Local Choices? Vulnerability to Climate Change and Community-Based Adaptation in Rural Vanuatu. Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Waikato.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weisser, Florian, Michael Bollig, Martin Doevenspeck, and Detlef Müller-Mahn. 2014. Translating the ‘Adaptation to Climate Change’ Paradigm: The Politics of a Travelling Idea in Africa. The Geographical Journal 180(2): 111–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Wit, Sara. 2011. Global Warning: An Ethnography of the Encounter Between Global and Local Climate-Change Discourses in the Bamenda Grassfields, Cameroon. M.A. Thesis, University of Leiden.

    Google Scholar 

  • Worliczek, Elisabeth. 2013. La Vision de L’espace Littoral sur l’île Wallis et L’atoll Rangiroa dans le Contexte du Changement Climatique. Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Vienna.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Pascht, A., Dürr, E. (2017). Engaging with Environmental Transformation in Oceania. In: Dürr, E., Pascht, A. (eds) Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53349-4_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53349-4_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53348-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53349-4

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics