How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts

by Candis Callison

Overview

During the past decade, skepticism about climate change has frustrated those seeking to engage broad publics and motivate them to take action on the issue. In this innovative ethnography, Candis Callison examines the initiatives of social and professional groups as they encourage diverse American publics to care about climate change. She explores the efforts of science journalists, scientists who have become expert voices for and about climate change, American evangelicals, Indigenous leaders, and advocates for corporate social responsibility.

The disparate efforts of these groups illuminate the challenge of maintaining fidelity to scientific facts while transforming them into ethical and moral calls to action. Callison investigates the different vernaculars through which we understand and articulate our worlds, as well as the nuanced and pluralistic understandings of climate change evident in different forms of advocacy. As she demonstrates, climate change offers an opportunity to look deeply at how issues and problems that begin in a scientific context come to matter to wide publics, and to rethink emerging interactions among different kinds of knowledge and experience, evolving media landscapes, and claims to authority and expertise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822357872
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	12/05/2014
Series:	Experimental Futures Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Candis Callison is Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Inuit Gift 39
2. Reporting on Climate Change 81
3. Blessing the Facts 121
4. Negotiating Risk, Expertise, and Near-Advocacy 162
5. What Gets Measured Gets Managed 201
Epilogue. Rethinking Public Engagement and Collaboration 243
Appendix. A Decade of Climate Change 253
Notes 263
References 283
Index 303

What People are Saying About This

Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture - Henry Jenkins

"A gifted storyteller who brings enormous empathy and nuance to each group she documents, Candis Callison depicts the current discursive struggles over climate change, as such diverse players as corporate responsibility advocates, evangelical Christians, and Inuit tribal leaders, not to mention scientists and journalists, seek to reconcile the need for dramatic change with their existing sets of professional norms and cultural values. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how science gets refracted across an increasingly diverse media landscape and for anyone who wants to understand how they might be more effective at changing entrenched beliefs and practices."

Science and Public Reason - Sheila Jasanoff

"Candis Callison has done the impossible. In the reams of words written about climate change, one rarely finds a fresh perspective or responses to the most salient questions. Why does climate change matter, why do some care about it while others are indifferent, and is scientific knowledge the only way to address these questions? Ethnography, Callison shows, can offer deeply satisfying answers where other methods fail. Through fascinating stories of communal meaning-making, Callison also demonstrates how work across disciplines can make sense of the spectrum from climate fundamentalism to climate denial."

Editorial Reviews

"... readers can reflect on the experimental methods used for public engagement and questions of media, politics, and scientific expertise that operate on shifting theoretical, empirical, and moral perspectives to help consider definitions of what climate change means. Recommended. Graduate students/faculty."--R. A. Delgado Jr. "Choice" (8/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"...a key work examining the wide variety of 'discourse coalitions' involved in climate communication. It is a magisterial treatment of the deep roots of contention in this momentous and unfolding story."--Noel Salmond "Reading Religion" (5/22/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"How Climate Change Comes to Matter is dense, intelligent, and thoroughly researched.... She presents an interesting conversation about climate change, rather than engaging in many of the typical debates one could read anywhere. Her unique perspective informs the content of the book and makes for an interesting read."--Jonathan Bond "Vancouver Weekly"

"This book is a marvel. It brings climate change research directly back into the folds of the anthropological tradition; and brings the anthropological tradition to the beating centers of climate change discourse. If you have never before had an interest in climate change, you will be spellbound by this ethnography. If you do have an interest in climate change, this book is essential."--Elizabeth Marino "Anthropos" (2/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"...a key work examining the wide variety of 'discourse coalitions' involved in climate communication. It is a magisterial treatment of the deep roots of contention in this momentous and unfolding story."

Reading Religion - Noel Salmond

"A gifted storyteller who brings enormous empathy and nuance to each group she documents, Candis Callison depicts the current discursive struggles over climate change, as such diverse players as corporate responsibility advocates, evangelical Christians, and Inuit tribal leaders, not to mention scientists and journalists, seek to reconcile the need for dramatic change with their existing sets of professional norms and cultural values. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how science gets refracted across an increasingly diverse media landscape and for anyone who wants to understand how they might be more effective at changing entrenched beliefs and practices."

Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture - Henry Jenkins

"Candis Callison has done the impossible. In the reams of words written about climate change, one rarely finds a fresh perspective or responses to the most salient questions. Why does climate change matter, why do some care about it while others are indifferent, and is scientific knowledge the only way to address these questions? Ethnography, Callison shows, can offer deeply satisfying answers where other methods fail. Through fascinating stories of communal meaning-making, Callison also demonstrates how work across disciplines can make sense of the spectrum from climate fundamentalism to climate denial."

Science and Public Reason - Sheila Jasanoff

"A gifted storyteller who brings enormous empathy and nuance to each group she documents, Candis Callison depicts the current discursive struggles over climate change, as such diverse players as corporate responsibility advocates, evangelical Christians, and Inuit tribal leaders, not to mention scientists and journalists, seek to reconcile the need for dramatic change with their existing sets of professional norms and cultural values. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how science gets refracted across an increasingly diverse media landscape and for anyone who wants to understand how they might be more effective at changing entrenched beliefs and practices."

Henry Jenkins

"Candis Callison has done the impossible. In the reams of words written about climate change, one rarely finds a fresh perspective or responses to the most salient questions. Why does climate change matter, why do some care about it while others are indifferent, and is scientific knowledge the only way to address these questions? Ethnography, Callison shows, can offer deeply satisfying answers where other methods fail. Through fascinating stories of communal meaning-making, Callison also demonstrates how work across disciplines can make sense of the spectrum from climate fundamentalism to climate denial."

Sheila Jasanoff

"This book is a marvel. It brings climate change research directly back into the folds of the anthropological tradition; and brings the anthropological tradition to the beating centers of climate change discourse. If you have never before had an interest in climate change, you will be spellbound by this ethnography. If you do have an interest in climate change, this book is essential."

Anthropos - Elizabeth Marino

How Climate Change Comes to Matter is dense, intelligent, and thoroughly researched…. She presents an interesting conversation about climate change, rather than engaging in many of the typical debates one could read anywhere. Her unique perspective informs the content of the book and makes for an interesting read.

Vancouver Weekly - Jonathan Bond

... readers can reflect on the experimental methods used for public engagement and questions of media, politics, and scientific expertise that operate on shifting theoretical, empirical, and moral perspectives to help consider definitions of what climate change means. Recommended. Graduate students/faculty.

Choice - R. A. Delgado Jr.