When climatologists meet social scientists: ethnographic speculations around interdisciplinary equivocations

Abstract

This article argues for the need to address the fact that a large amount of conflict over environmental knowledge occurs inside the academy, against the commonsensical perception that it is a mark of the relationship between science and non-science. It proposes a conceptual speculative exercise that uses a framework presented by indigenous ethnology, specifically the theory of Amerindian perspectivism, to address tensions among scientific disciplines in interdisciplinary work. Ethnographic vignettes about contentious encounters between climatologists/meteorologists and social scientists are used as methodological and analytical resources. The paper argues for a non-platonic approach to interdisciplinarity, suggesting that a more productive and realistic attitude treats the collaboration of different disciplines as a case of alliance among “enemies”, with the caveat that the concept of enemy should be understood here in terms of the relational philosophies of Amerindian peoples, where antagonistic difference is valued for its constitutive and productive effects on reality.

Back by popular demand, ontology

“…Second, we show how this diagnosis can foster interdisciplinary communication and dialogue. Taddei and Haines (2019) demonstrate that equivocation with respect to key concepts is a serious concern of interdisciplinary inquiry. In the case of ontology in anthropology and philosophy, Graeber (2017) argues that the meanings of ontology are drastically inconsistent, which obfuscates the understanding of what ontological anthropology sets out to do and whether in fact it delivers on any of its promises.…”

Climate change reception studies in anthropology

“…Nayanika Mathur (2017) posits that anthropologists are well-placed to take on the role of "climate translators," by looking beyond explicit and conventional climate change narratives to illuminate wider historical, human and more-than-human relations that have explanatory power for understanding the current predicament. Others, too, might be considered translating subjects in the explanation and production of social and material worlds, for example interdisciplinary practitioners (Taddei & Haines, 2019) and environments themselves (Di Giminiani & Haines, 2020).…”

“…In Marilyn Strathern's words: “Anthropologists are generally … alert to the nontranslatability of different types of knowledge across conceptual universes while continuing to communicate that very sense of difference … each perspective creates its own problematic—the question, then, is how does ‘one problem’ (climate change) emerge?” (in Diemberger et al, 2012, p. 239). Ethnographies that explore such emergent spaces seek to bring insight into the implications of the politics of knowledge (Yusoff & Gabrys, 2011, p. 522)—epistemology alongside ontology—by exploring movement, translation, friction, contradiction, incommensurability and equivocation, across different ways of knowing and being that are hybrid and plural (Schnegg, 2019, 2021), including across scientific disciplines (Bodenhorn, 2013; Povinelli, 2001; Taddei & Haines, 2019; Tsing, 2005), and in relation to the way that children in different places around the world learn engage with climate change (Irvine et al, 2019). Drawing on work with activist scientists and government actors, Hannah Knox (2015) proposes “thinking like a climate” as a way to move past explanations of how facts are established or challenged, and towards recognition of how a distinct “ontology of climate”—understood as a material process inseparable from social relations—frames political imagination and action.…”

Anthropology and the Pragmatics of Climate Knowledge in Brazil

“…Anthropologists are especially well positioned to contribute to climate change research, where they join an arena marked by fast‐paced positivistic research. How anthropologists participate in collaborative climate‐related research projects, nevertheless, is a complex and fascinating topic of study (Taddei and Haines 2019). While anthropologists are often expected to contribute by “translating” science to local populations and producing “anecdotal evidence” for the findings of other disciplines, we also bring to the debate the often uncomfortable (for the natural sciences) question of the epistemological relevance of Indigenous forms of knowledge in ways other than simply submitting these forms of knowledge to the test of “scientific,” empirical validation through positivistic methods.…”

“…Working with local technicians made me see that there are two kinds of techno‐scientific realms in meteorology (and in hydrology): one in which agents are unable to recognize to the performative effects of what they do and one in which they cannot afford to not recognize it. This distinction often causes some degree of internal conflict within meteorology (Fine 2007; Taddei and Haines 2019). Climate scientists and technicians, in general, are trained to focus on the denotative, referential dimension of language and knowledge and not to focus on the performative dimensions of language use.…”