An anthropological perspective on the climate change and violence relationship

Abstract

Purpose of Review:This review explores the complex climate change-violence relationship through an anthropological lens, focusing on the interacting social and environmental conditions that constrain individual choices for violence. Evidence and methods used by anthropologists to identify violent events, as well as anthropological theories regarding why individuals choose violence, are discussed. A general social-environmental model is presented and explored through four case studies, two archaeological and two ethnographic. Recent Findings: Recent research with historic and contemporary case studies suggests that resource uncertainty interacts with a complex array of pre-existing social and environmental conditions, including environmental degradation, poor governance, and social inequality, to promote violent responses both before and following climatic changes. Individuals may choose to avoid violence where supporting, cooperative mechanisms exist. Summary: Given that individuals make choices to respond violently or not based on their perceptions of these complex, interacting social and environmental conditions, violence in response to global climate change is not inevitable. KEYWORDS cooperation; governance; resource uncertainty; social-environmental system; social inequality; structural violence ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to Drs. Elisabeth Gilmore and Brian Sodden for their invitation to contribute to this special edition of Current Climate Change Reports. There is no conflict of interest.

Extreme and Variable Climatic Conditions Drive the Evolution of Sociality in Australian Rodents

“…Parallel to climatic conditions favoring the evolution of sociality, environmental uncertainty can also generate conflict that opposes societal formation. Over ecological timescales, for example, environmental uncertainty leads to aggression [5] as well as reproductive conflict [2][3][4], which can destabilize societies in periods of drought and low resource availability. However, over both ecological (e.g., [27-29, 33, 34]) and evolutionary timescales (e.g., [30,35]), harsh and fluctuating environments have also been shown to drive the evolution of cooperative behaviors and the formation of societies in birds S1) mapped with environment type (branches), sociality status (boxes), and sexual dimorphism index (boxes).…”

“…Climate change is generating an intensification of extreme environmental conditions, including frequent and severe droughts [1] that have been associated with increased social conflict in vertebrates [2][3][4], including humans [5]. Yet, fluctuating climatic conditions have been shown to also promote cooperative behavior and the formation of vertebrate societies over both ecological and evolutionary timescales [6].…”

The missing subject: Enabling a postcolonial future for climate conflict research

“…This is an intellectual pursuit that has not yet been taken seriously by postcolonial or political geographers. Even a closer examination of a review article on the “anthropological perspective on the climate change and violence relationship” (Shaffer, 2017), reveals that none of the “ethnographic analysis” on Darfur (Abouyoub, 2012; Kuznar & Sedlmeyer, 2005) or “East Africa” (Adano et al., 2012; Opiyo et al., 2014; Raleigh & Kniveton, 2012) – its two case studies – referred to in the article are based on long‐term and intensive fieldwork in these societies. It seems understanding subaltern subjectivities and cosmologies is irrelevant when trying to establish the ‘truth’ about climate conflict.…”

Introduction to Special Issue: Disciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change and Conflict

“…Schaffer (2017), an environmental anthropologist, begins by expanding the dimensions of conflict from armed conflict and group violence to include interpersonal (e.g., one-on-one aggression) and structural violence (e.g., violence from institutional structures, policies, and ideologies that value some segments of the population more than others) as well as cooperative behavior [32]. Anthropologists draw on both archeological (e.g., fossil records and excavations of settlements) and ethnographic (e.g., oral histories and interviews) evidence to investigate historical and current contexts [33].…”