Kate Porter

Expertise

Perceptions

Geoengineering

Staff Profiles

e-mail address

kateelizabethporter@gmail.com

Title

Miss

First Name

Kate

Surname

Porter

Institution

University of East Anglia

Current Position

PhD Researcher

PhD Researchers Profile

Duration of your PhD

2010/2014

Thesis's Supervisor

Professor Mike Hulme

Funder

ESRC

My Thesis' Abstract

The desire for human control over climate and weather has a long history, emerging and re-emerging in different places, in different cultures, at different times and with different goals. In my PhD research I seek to study the historical, cultural, social and political origins and narratives of this human desire for climate control, a desire that is now being expressed as global control over global climate. Such research will improve understanding of how beliefs underpin people’s attitudes and behaviours towards climate change, of how people employ different ontological strategies to promote or resist the idea of climate control, and how alternative climate change ‘knowledges’ are mobilized.

With the emerging claims that science and technology may offer humanity a direct way of ‘controlling’ global climate through climate intervention technologies (‘a planetary thermostat’), understanding of different ontologies of climate and their subsequent interaction with the framing, ideologies and discourse of climate control is of fundamental importance. There remains much to explore of the complex ontological beliefs that people - in different political, cultural, social and ideological contexts - hold about climate and therefore how people relate to climate change and the discourse of climate control. Following the relatively recent sea-change in the paradigms that structure notions of development, which has shifted emphasis towards participatory approaches for environmental governance, there is increasing need and opportunity to realise the considerable value to be gained from better comprehension of, and sensitivity to, alternative perspectives beyond just dominant Western techno-centric discourses. Greater appreciation of the different ways in which people approach the idea of climate, climate change and climate control will be fundamental to opening up the space for dialogue (notably multi-directional interchanges of knowledges between science, policy and society) and, ultimately, new forms of climate governance.

The project will draw upon the theories and methods of environmental history, historical geography, resource management and social anthropology to examine and explain the desire for climate control in present day society. The MRes dissertation will be an opportunity to develop some initial ideas in preparation for the PhD research. This may involve a survey of published material on climate and society – from different eras and cultures – to develop a historiographical narrative of how humans have approached the idea of climate control. An alternative, or addition, to this would be to focus on a small number of academic texts in more detail, each of which reveals a distinct approach to climate control, and subject each text to close reading to compare and contrast their underlying ontology. Three texts which could be used in such a critical comparison include: James Lovelock’s ‘Revenge of Gaia’; Julie Cruikshank’s ‘Do Glaciers Listen?’; and Dave Reay’s ‘Climate Change Begins at Home: life on the two way street of global warming’.

The PhD research will involve a combination of historiography, discourse analysis and qualitative empirical social science research. An initial discourse analysis of how different sub-cultures in the UK talk about and relate to the concept of climate control will set the context. Direct engagement with some of these communities and empirical investigation of their beliefs, worldviews and behaviours will be explored through ethnographic style participant-observer research and/or through focus groups and interview. The study will not aim to be representative, but rather will aim to illuminate and expose the depth of diversity about beliefs climate control ‘knowledges’, allowing new and emerging debates about climate control through large-scale technological interventions in the planet to be placed into much wider contexts and revealing different interests and ideologies at work.

Research Themes

ENERGY AND EMISSIONS

History

Member for

1 year 17 weeks