Making sense of climate change

Hybrid Epistemologies, Socio‐natural Assemblages and Smallholder Knowledge

Bibliographic Data

ID8097949
AuthorsMorey Burnham (0000-0001-5716-9964, Department of Environmental Studies State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry Syracuse NY 13210 USA, corresponding author), Zhao Ma (0000-0001-9642-1296, Department of Forestry and Natural Resources Purdue University West Lafayette IN 47909 USA), Baoqing Zhang (0000-0003-4310-9586, Research School of Arid Environment and Climate Change Lanzhou University Lanzhou Gansu 730000 China)
Year2015
Volume48
Issue1
Pages18-26
Publication date2015-01-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArea (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-0894 • E-ISSN: 1475-4762
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/area.12150
OpenAlexW2113028126
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited34

This paper uses a mixed‐method approach to investigate smallholder perceptions of climate change in the Loess Plateau region of C hina. We combine qualitative and quantitative research methods with climate data analysis to gauge the climatic changes smallholders have perceived over the last 30 years, as well as how these changes have been experienced. At two research sites, each method produced markedly different results. Drawing on the work of feminist political ecologists and other geographers, we suggest that the dissonance between data sets generated using different research methods arises because each method produces knowledge that is partial and situated. To explain the contradictions between smallholder perceptions of climate change across the qualitative and quantitative methods and their disagreement with the climate record, we adopt aspects of assemblage theory and the dwelling perspective to suggest that smallholder knowledge of climate change is structured through their observations of and interactions with dynamic, networked socio‐natural assemblages. We argue that a better understanding of the conduits through which perceptions and experiences of climate change come into being, and hence how climate knowledge is shaped, is necessary to account for the multiple epistemologies through which climate change is known

Climate change · Cognitive dissonance · Environmental resource management · Epistemology · Geography · Natural (archaeology · Perception · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Computer Science · Environmental Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Psychology · Ecology · Social Psychology