Persistent Myths
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17827463 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Raka Sen (0000-0002-6197-5691, Arizona State University), Saleh Ahmed (0000-0002-5064-1389, Michigan State University), Mahmuda Akter (0000-0003-2575-942X, Plan International Bangladesh) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology of Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2374-538X • E-ISSN: 2374-538X |
| Publisher | University of California Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1525/sod.2026.2872018 |
| OpenAlex | W7154983784 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
Climate change is making traditional pathways to upward mobility difficult in climate-vulnerable regions, but social understandings of these changes lag behind lived realities. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic data from the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangladesh, this paper examines families’ everyday adaptations: their short-, medium-, and long-term goals and strategies to thrive in spite of climate change. We argue that strategies that emphasize individual asset accumulation increase climate vulnerability, whereas strategies that emphasize collective and place-based knowledge are more successful at providing economic security. In particular, families pursuing entrepreneurship and land ownership face repeated climate-related losses and debt cycles, while those accessing collective wage labor, NGO employment, and skill-based innovations demonstrate greater resilience and wealth accumulation. But even when families understand that collective, risk-sharing strategies work better than individual accumulation, they are not always able to act on this understanding, as they remain constrained by traditional practices, long-standing development models, and economic structures that force them toward vulnerable, market-dependent livelihoods. This article traces how local people’s own understanding of mobility is confronted with barriers in an age of climate-arrested development
Asset (computer security) · Climate change · Debt · Ethnography · Face (sociological concept) · Mythology · Psychological resilience · Wage · Work (physics) · Climate change impacts on agriculture · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
When not every response to climate change is a good one
Maladaptation
Equity in human adaptation-related responses
A paradox of the ‘community’
Expertise and exclusivity in adaptation decision-making
Personal mobility and climate change
Everyday Adaptation
Everyday realities of climate change adaptation in Mozambique
A call for a sociology of adaptation
Bamboo Beating Bandits
Keeping People in Place
Urban Informality
The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality
The climate change of your desires
Everyday adaptation, interrupted agency and beyond
| Highly cited | No |
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