Archive for 2011

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[ecrea] New book: Mediating Climate Change

Wed Aug 17 15:09:27 GMT 2011


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




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