[ecrea] New book: Mediating Climate Change

Mediating Climate Change

Julie Doyle, University of Brighton, UK

Ashgate Series: Environmental Sociology

ISBN: 978-0-7546-7668-3 (hdbk) 978-0-7546-7669-0 (e-book) Order 
online: £45.00 
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=417&title_id=8795&edition_id=11986 
<http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=417&title_id=8795&edition_id=11986>

Climate change has been a significant area of scientific concern since 
the late 1970s, but has only recently entered mainstream culture and 
politics. However, as media coverage of climate change increases in the 
twenty-first century, the gap between our understanding of climate 
change and climate action appears to widen. 



In this timely book, Julie Doyle explores how practices of mediation and 
visualisation shape how we think about, address and act upon climate 
change. Through historical and contemporary case studies drawn from 
science, media, politics and culture, Mediating Climate Change 
identifies the representational problems climate change poses for public 
and political debate. It offers ways forward by exploring how climate 
change can be made more meaningful through, for example, innovative 
forms of climate activism, the reframing of meat and dairy consumption, 
media engagement with climate events and science, and artistic 
experimentation. 



Doyle argues that cultural discourses have problematically situated 
nature and the environment as objects externalised from humans and 
culture. Mediating Climate Change calls for a more nuanced understanding 
of human-environmental relations, in order for us to be able to more 
fully imagine and address the challenges climate change poses for us all.

*Content:*

Introduction: making climate change meaningful

Part I Historicising/Theorising Climate Change:

Chapter 1: Problematising science and environment: conceptualising 
nature, vision and time in the mediation of climate change

Chapter 2: Visualising climate change: negotiating the temporalities of 
climate through imagery

Chapter 3: Coda: nature, vision and time

Part II Mediating/Addressing Climate Change:

Chapter 4: An emerging climate movement: questioning values of 
environment, justice and faith

Chapter 5: Mediating Copenhagen: communicating scientific (un)certainty 
and the political (un)urgency of climate action

Chapter 6: Sustainable consumption? Reframing meat and dairy consumption 
in the politics of climate change

Chapter 7: Imaginative engagements: critical reflections on visual arts 
and climate change

Epilogue: positive action in a changing climate

*Reviews: *

'This is an insightful volume that challenges us to unpack and 
reconsider ways in which climate change becomes meaningful in our lives. 
In particular, author Julie Doyle has insightfully explored how imagery 
shapes our understanding, and how food consumption matters to mitigation 
efforts. Overall, Doyle has asked novel and productive questions that 
advance our shared considerations of climate and society.' 
- Maxwell T. 
Boykoff, University of Colorado-Boulder, USA 


'How people think and feel about the idea of climate change influences 
the way they evaluate and act on the facts of climate change. In 
Mediating Climate Change, Julie Doyle examines this simple but important 
proposition and explains why and how this can be. Doyle’s focus on the 
multiple meanings of climate change, and how these can (dis)empower, is 
a necessary correction to the inconclusive and tiresome arguments about 
scientific (un)certainties which plague public debates. In so doing, 
Mediating Climate Change contributes to a much bigger and more profound 
project: reconnecting the human faculty of imagination and the material 
consequences of human action.' 
- Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, UK