Explores the latest historical research on the development of the earth's climate, showing how even minor changes in the climate could result in major social, political, and religious upheavals.

Charting innovative directions in the environmental humanities, this book examines the cultural history of climate change under three broad headings: history, writing and politics. Climate change compels us to rethink many of our traditional means of historical understanding, and demands new ways of relating human knowledge, action and representations to the dimensions of geological and evolutionary time. To address these challenges, this book positions our present moment of climatic knowledge within much longer histories of climatic experience. Only in light of these histories, it argues, can we properly understand what climate means today across an array of discursive domains, from politics, literature and law to neighbourly conversation. Its chapters identify turning-points and experiments in the construction of climates and of atmospheres of sensation. They examine how contemporary ecological thought has repoliticised the representation of nature and detail vital aspects of the history and prehistory of our climatic modernity. This ground-breaking text will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in environmental history, environmental governance, history of ideas and science, literature and eco-criticism, political theory, cultural theory, as well as all general readers interested in climate change.

The Companion to Global Environmental History offers multiple points of entry into the history and historiography of this dynamic and fast-growing field, to provide an essential road map to past developments, current controversies, and future developments for specialists and newcomers alike. Combines temporal, geographic, thematic and contextual approaches from prehistory to the present day Explores environmental thought and action around the world, to give readers a cultural, intellectual and political context for engagement with the environment in modern times Brings together environmental historians from around the world, including scholars from South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and China

Climate change is a critical issue for heritage studies. Sites, objects and ways of life all are coming under threat, requiring alternative management, or requiring specific climate change adaptation. Heritage is key to interpreting the societal significance of climate change; notions (and images) of the past are crucial to our understanding of the present, and are used to prompt actions that help society define and achieve a specific and desired future. Relatively little attention has been paid to the critical intersections between heritage and climate change. The Future of Heritage as Climates Change frames the intellectual context within which heritage and climate change can be examined, presenting cases and sub-fields in which the heritage-climate change nexus is being examined and provides synthetic analyses through five overarching themes: The heritage of change among coastal communities: liminality and the politics of engagement Dwelling materials: processes and possibilities; Environmental heritage: meanings of the past – prospects for the future; Blurring the boundaries of nature and culture: the politics of anticipation; Climate change and heritage practice: adaptation and resilience. The Future of Heritage as Climates Change provides scholars, managers, policy makers and students with a much needed examination of heritage and climate change to help make critical decisions in the next several decades.

Mike Hulme has been studying climate change for over thirty years and is today one of the most distinctive and recognisable voices speaking internationally about climate change in the academy, in public and in the media. The argument that he has made powerfully over the last few years is that climate change has to be understood as much as an idea situated in different cultural contexts as it is as a physical phenomenon to be studied through universal scientific practices. Climate change at its core embraces both science and society, both knowledge and culture. Hulme’s numerous academic and popular writings have explored what this perspective means for the different ways climate change is studied, narrated, argued over and acted upon. Exploring Climate Change through Science and in Society gathers together for the first time a collection of his most popular, prominent and controversial articles, essays, speeches, interviews and reviews dating back to the late 1980s. The 50 or so short items are grouped together in seven themes - Science, Researching, Culture, Policy, Communicating, Controversy, Futures - and within each theme are arranged chronologically to reveal changing ideas, evidence and perspectives about climate change. Each themed section is preceded with a brief introduction, drawing out the main issues examined. Three substantive unpublished new essays have been specially written for the book, including one reflecting on the legacy of Climategate. Taken as a collection, these writings reveal the changes in scientific and public understandings of climate change since the late 1980s, as refracted through the mind and expression of one leading academic and public commentator. The collection shows the many different ways in which it is necessary to approach the idea of climate change to interpret and make sense of the divergent and discordant voices proclaiming it in the public sphere.

Greenhouse gases, global warming, thinning ozone layers—understanding the Earth's climatic changes is one of today's most pressing international concerns. How fast has the climate changed? Where and why is it changing? What is the impact of climate change on our ecosystems, coastal regions, glaciers, forests, and lakes, and even on the evolution of our own species? This introduction to the rapidly emerging field of paleoclimatology explains the patterns and processes in the history of the Earth's climate to answer such essential questions. Using the geologic records of ocean and lake sediment, ice cores, corals, and other natural archives, Principles of Paleoclimatology describes the history of the Earth's climate—the ice age cycles, sea level changes, volcanic activity, changes in atmosphere and solar radiation—and the resulting, sometimes catastrophic, biotic responses. These paleoclimate records provide a baseline against which we can compare modern climate trends. Designed to give a fundamental background—including both history and methodology—to the discipline of paleoclimatology, this book is the first to advance our understanding of how climate change develops, how those changes are detected, and how the climate of the past can shape the climate of the future.

Additional keywords : Aboriginal or Native peoples, Indians, First Nations.

The expression ‘cultural history’ is generally used today to signal a particular approach to history, one which could be applied to any object, and is mainly concerned with the sense men and women from the past gave to the world they lived in. In this introduction to cultural history as a subdiscipline, the reader will find the key steps in the historical development of the field from 1850 to the present. It surveys different ways in which cultural history has been practised, exploring intellectual history, the history of ideas and concepts, of mentalities, of symbols and representations, and of languages and discourses. Cultural History also maps the territory cultural history most effectively enlightens: gender; the family and sexuality; the body; senses and emotions and images; material culture and consumption; the media and communication. Lastly, it includes an appendix of biographies of a number of influential cultural historians. This concise and accessible introduction will be an essential volume for any university student studying cultural history.

The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World is a comprehensive examination of recent discussions and findings in the exciting field of cultural history. A synthesis of how the new cultural history has transformed the study of history, the volume is divided into three parts – medieval, early modern and modern – that emphasize the way people made sense of the world around them. Contributions cover such themes as material cultures of living, mobility and transport, cultural exchange and transfer, power and conflict, emotion and communication, and the history of the senses. The focus is on the Western world, but the notion of the West is a flexible one. In bringing together 36 authors from 15 countries, the book takes a wide geographical coverage, devoting continuous attention to global connections and the emerging trend of globalization. It builds a panorama of the transformation of Western identities, and the critical ramifications of that evolution from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, that offers the reader a wide-ranging illustration of the potentials of cultural history as a way of studying the past in a variety of times, spaces and aspects of human experience. Engaging with historiographical debate and covering a vast range of themes, periods and places, The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World is the ideal resource for cultural history students and scholars to understand and advance this dynamic field.

Food and attitudes toward it were transformed in Renaissance Europe. The period between 1300 and 1600 saw the discovery of the New World and the cultivation of new foodstuffs, as well as the efflorescence of culinary literature in European courts and eventually in the popular press, and most importantly the transformation of the economy on a global scale. Food became the object of rigorous investigation among physicians, theologians, agronomists and even poets and artists. Concern with eating was, in fact, central to the cultural dynamism we now recognize as the Renaissance. A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance presents an overview of the period with essays on food production, food systems, food security, safety and crises, food and politics, eating out, professional cooking, kitchens and service work, family and domesticity, body and soul, representations of food, and developments in food production and consumption globally.