Search results

In disaster‐related policies and practices, culture is often treated as tangible, homogenous, static. The diversity of communities and places, on‐the‐ground actions and networks for how things are actually accomplished, intricacies of local politics and maneuvering and layers of socio‐historical inequalities, are often missing from expert calculations and official frameworks for action. The basic but most important first question goes unasked: "What would you do and how?" Disaster anthropology relentlessly arrives at the all‐too‐common problem of "policies and practices need to consider local culture." Here too culture is framed as static, passive, homogenous. Understanding the complexity and dynamics by which we experience and understand the world is much more challenging than at first glance. Culture is fluid, evolving, and intertwined with a host of economic, political, and social relations and tensions that are constantly altering seemingly stable processes. This leads to at least two related questions. First, how do we theorize beyond this point to better interpret and explain the persistent issue of cultural insensitivity in disaster‐related policy and practice? And second, how can we develop more useful and successful prescriptions for incorporating cultural sensitivity into policy and practice? Overall, this article puts forward the argument that disaster reconstruction is a complex, culturally sensitive dynamic, within which decisions are embedded in tensions of social, political, and economic priorities. While disasters can function as a mechanism to sustain and perpetuate power relations, disaster survivors have distinct agency through the disaster recovery process and are empowered citizens that should be treated as equal partners to guide the process in a way that makes sense on‐the‐ground in the given local contexts. In the unfolding plays of disaster, the interpretive, behavioral, and material repertoires we refer to as culture exhibit some of the characteristics of emergence, insomuch as they are not fully determined by arrangements that precede them; yet, neither are they without antecedents, relationships with the past and other ongoing processes.

Environmental changes, such as sea level rise, are forcibly displacing communities around the world. Forced displacement, inadequate governance mechanisms to address relocation and economic-based adaptation and restoration efforts are leading to devastating social, cultural, health, and economic consequences for the people and communities affected. This article focuses on three tribal communities in coastal Louisiana that are experiencing rapid environmental change and risk of displacement due to historical discriminatory processes, oil and dam-related development projects, oil disasters, increased exposure to hurricanes, and relative sea level rise. Focusing on the political ecology of the communities' experiences of environmental change, including the impacts of displacement and decisions to stay in-place vs. relocate, this paper addresses broader issues of adaptive governance structures and policy implications. Building on Bronen's (2011) rights-based approach to adaptation and Shearer's (2012) approach to a political ecology of adaptation, I argue that governance structures should be put in place that support communities' in-situ adaptation efforts or, if the community decides its current location is no longer inhabitable, to assist community-led relocation efforts. Multiple forms of knowledge should be incorporated into and should inform the structures supporting the adaptation process. I highlight the social, political, environmental and economic context within which environmental changes are occurring in coastal Louisiana through discussion on the loss of the commons, the creation of an energy sacrifice zone, costbenefit based restoration efforts and forced displacement and relocation.Key words: Environmental change, displacement, relocation, adaptation

The organizers of the 2014 US National Climate Assessment (NCA) made a concerted effort to reach out to and collaborate with Indigenous peoples, resulting in the most comprehensive information to date on climate change impacts to Indigenous peoples in a US national assessment. Yet, there is still much room for improvement in assessment processes to ensure adequate recognition of Indigenous perspectives and Indigenous knowledge systems. This article discusses the process used in creating the Indigenous Peoples, Land, and Resources NCA chapter by a team comprised of tribal members, agencies, academics, and non-governmental organizations, who worked together to solicit, collect, and synthesize traditional knowledges and data from a diverse array of Indigenous communities across the US. It also discusses the synergy and discord between traditional knowledge systems and science and the emergence of cross-cutting issues and vulnerabilities for Indigenous peoples. The challenges of coalescing information about climate change and its impacts on Indigenous communities are outlined along with recommendations on the types of information to include in future assessment outputs. We recommend that future assessments – not only NCA, but other relevant local, regional, national, and international efforts aimed at the translation of climate information and assessments into meaningful actions – should support integration of Indigenous perspectives in a sustained way that builds respectful relationships and effectively engages Indigenous communities. Given the large number of tribes in the US and the current challenges and unique vulnerabilities of Indigenous communities, a special report focusing solely on climate change and Indigenous peoples is warranted.

Abstract
Climate and weather-related disasters in California illustrate the need for immediate climate change action—both mitigation to reduce impacts and adaptation to protect our communities, relatives, and the ecosystems we depend upon. Indigenous frontline communities face even greater threats from climate impacts due to historical and political legacies of environmental injustice. Climate change adaptation actions have proven challenging to implement as communities struggle to access necessary climate data at appropriate scales, identify effective strategies that address community priorities, and obtain resources to act at a whole-community level. In this paper, we present three examples of Indigenous communities in California that have used a climate justice approach to climate change adaptation. These communities are drawing upon community knowledge and expertise to address the challenges of adaptation planning and taking actions that center community priorities. The three cases address emergency preparation and response, cultural burning and fire management, and community organizing and social cohesion. Across these spheres, they illustrate the ways in which a community-based and climate justice-focused approach to adaptation can be effective in addressing current threats while also addressing the legacy of imposed, socially constructed vulnerability and environmental injustices. Because we recognize the need for multiple knowledges and skills in adaptation actions, we include recommendations that have emerged based on what has been learned through these long-standing and engaged participatory research collaborations for climate scientists who wish to contribute to climate justice-focused adaptation efforts by using scientific data to support—not supplant—community efforts, target funding toward genuine community engagement and adaptation actions, and become aware of the historical and political legacies that created the climate vulnerabilities and injustices evident today.

AbstractIt is difficult to canonize anthropology and anthropological concepts, in part because of the creative tensions within the discipline's contradictions: a desire and deep respect for local knowledge with a global, comparative perspective, what might be called the "anthropological imagination." Firmly rooted in—and in defense of—an inclusive vision of humanity, an anthropological imagination inspires "radical empathy." It offers the scaffolding of a coalitional politics that values the specificity of local struggles but also reaffirms and defends humanity. We must identify the humanity in others, and the common humanity in their struggle, while affirming particular identities and challenging differential privilege: an anthropological imagination inspires radical empathy and solidarity, reminding us, in the words of the World Social Forum, that "another world is possible." How people learn to cultivate this anthropological imagination and bring it in the service of marginalized groups is not generally discussed, and rarely taught. This article aims to bridge this gap. On October 10, 2018, Julie Maldonado, Associate Director for the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN), discussed her new book, Seeking Justice in an Energy Sacrifice Zone: Standing on Vanishing Land in Coastal Louisiana, via video‐conference with Mark Schuller's Anthropology and Contemporary World Problems class at Northern Illinois University. This interview offers one perspective of a career focused around advocacy anthropology that aims to reach public audiences and policy‐ and decision‐makers in ways that translates scholarly research into information that is most useful for problem solving and enacting change in response to our climate crisis.

Presently coastal areas globally are becoming unviable, with people no longer able to maintain livelihoods and settlements due to, for example, increasing floods, storm surges, coastal erosion, and sea level rise, yet there exist significant policy obstacles and practical and regulatory challenges to community-led and community-wide responses. For many receiving support only at the individual level for relocation or other adaptive responses, individual and community harm is perpetuated through the loss of culture and identity incurred through forced assimilation policies. Often, challenges dealt to frontline communities are founded on centuries of injustices. Can these challenges of both norms and policies be addressed? Can we develop socially, culturally, environmentally, and economically just sustainable adaptation processes that supports community responses, maintenance and evolution of traditions, and rejuvenates regenerative life-supporting ecosystems? This article brings together Indigenous community leaders, knowledge-holders, and allied collaborators from Louisiana, Hawai'i, Alaska, Borikén/Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands, to share their stories and lived experiences of the relocation and other adaptive challenges in their homelands and territories, the obstacles posed by the state or regional governments in community adaptation efforts, ideas for transforming the research paradigm from expecting communities to answer scientific questions to having scientists address community priorities, and the healing processes that communities are employing. The contributors are connected through the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, which brings together Indigenous, tribal, and community leaders, atmospheric, social, biological, and ecological scientists, students, educators, and other experts, and facilitates intercultural, relational-based approaches for understanding and adapting to extreme weather and climate events, climate variability, and climate change.

Presently coastal areas globally are becoming unviable, with people no longer able to maintain livelihoods and settlements due to, for example, increasing floods, storm surges, coastal erosion, and sea level rise, yet there exist significant policy obstacles and practical and regulatory challenges to community-led and community-wide responses. For many receiving support only at the individual level for relocation or other adaptive responses, individual and community harm is perpetuated through the loss of culture and identity incurred through forced assimilation policies. Often, challenges dealt to frontline communities are founded on centuries of injustices. Can these challenges of both norms and policies be addressed? Can we develop socially, culturally, environmentally, and economically just sustainable adaptation processes that supports community responses, maintenance and evolution of traditions, and rejuvenates regenerative life-supporting ecosystems? This article brings together Indigenous community leaders, knowledge-holders, and allied collaborators from Louisiana, Hawai'i, Alaska, Borikén/Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands, to share their stories and lived experiences of the relocation and other adaptive challenges in their homelands and territories, the obstacles posed by the state or regional governments in community adaptation efforts, ideas for transforming the research paradigm from expecting communities to answer scientific questions to having scientists address community priorities, and the healing processes that communities are employing. The contributors are connected through the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, which brings together Indigenous, tribal, and community leaders, atmospheric, social, biological, and ecological scientists, students, educators, and other experts, and facilitates intercultural, relational-based approaches for understanding and adapting to extreme weather and climate events, climate variability, and climate change.

Climate change is a slowly advancing crisis sweeping over the planet and affecting different habitats in strikingly diverse ways. While nations have signed treaties and implemented policies, most actual climate change assessments, adaptations, and countermeasures take place at the local level. People are responding by adjusting their practices, livelihoods, and cultures, protesting and migrating. This book portrays the diversity of explanations and remedies as expressed at the community level and its emphasis on the crucial importance of ethnographic detail in demonstrating how people in different parts of the world are scaling down the phenomenon of global warming