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The Human Factor in Climate Change
The ambition for the cross-disciplinary research group: The Human Factor in Climate Change Processes is to present a contribution to the issue of climate change from the humanities. An assumption in the research group’s projects, has been that man is not only a CO2 producing being, but also an interpretive being, which acts with an outset in collective understandings of the world. Cultural conceptions of for instance solidarity, nature, identity, value, justice and security are decisive factors in understanding how people generate and manage climate change.
It is the intention of the individual projects that stem from the group, to create an understanding of the cultural practices that determine how people act – or fail to act – in a world undergoing climate change. Such an understanding is a necessary condition for constructive suggestions on how possibly to think and act in a more expedient manner.
The research group meets regularly for inspirational seminars and discussion sessions. In addition to the cross-disciplinary development of the subject area, it is the intention - in the long run - to work on common seminars and grant applications for external research funding.
For more information, please contact Birgitte Grundtvig: grundtvig@hum.ku.dk
Professor Jørgen Delman: Responses of the Chinese Party-State to the Climate Change Challenge
Jørgen Delman works on aspects of structural and institutional
transformations of the state-society interface in China. In the field
of climate change, his work focuses on responses of the party-state to
the climate change challenge and its incorporation of or involvement
with social and corporate actors on the climate scene in a broad sense
in the development of policies, strategies and implementation measures
to address climate change.
A project is under preparation with Prof. Niels Fold, Dept. of
Geography and Assoc. Prof. Jens Ladefoged Mortensen, Dept. of
Political Science, both at Copenhagen University, as well as Dr. Yu
Wang, Tsinghua University in Beijing. The project will examine biofuels
governance as a critical case in the emergence of contemporary climate
governance during the transition to a low carbon economy. The focus is
on how globalisation of biofuels as a strategic sector is governed by a
mix of public and corporate interests at different sites of authority,
nationally and internationally. Biofuels exemplifies how the governance
of renewable technologies are driven by complex dynamics within
economic globalization, national security and development policies,
climate change concerns, and new forms of transnational governance. The
project will operate in the comparative mode, focusing on EU, China and
the Global South.
In addition, PhD projects are under preparation by potential PhD
students on (1)societal adaptation in China to the climate change
challenge in so-called ‘low carbon economies’ at the regional level in
China and (2) about China’s development as a „green superpower“.
Associate Professor Isak Winkel Holm: Disaster Culture - the Social Imagination of Disaster
Associate Professor Isak Winkel Holm, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, is presently working on the cross-disciplinary research project "Disaster Culture - the Social Imagination of Disaster" in collaboration with Professor Henrik Palmer Olsen, Faculty of Law. The aim of the project is, on the one hand, to describe our collective images of disaster, and, on the other hand, to analyze how these cultural images give shape to the society we live in. The underlying thesis of the project is that this particular genre of social imagination plays a decisive role in the reformatting of modern society into a disaster society: a society in which the global climate catastrophe is an important turning point.
Associate Professor Frank Sejersen: Ice, climate and development in Greenland
The research project focuses on how different Greenlandic groups and institutions cope with the new challenges posed by climate change and how they navigate in a world where they are not only trying to maintain livelihoods but also push for further economic development and self-determination. Climate change has become yet another and more apparent factor that has to be integrated by different agents in Greenland when re-evaluating and re-negotiating the fabric of society and the future forms of economy, governance and livelihoods. The consequences of climate change are thus apparent in agendas that cross-cut the society and the knowledge systems, values, perspectives and aspirations of different groups. The project investigates how local users perceive and cope with climate change and how institutions take different scales into account and addresses capacity building and potentials for agency when formulating adaptation strategies. Combined with an analysis of the shifting landscape of adaptation in Greenland the project approaches the question of community resilience in order to improve our understanding of how a changing climate will affect the Arctic peoples and how they adapt to it. Read more at the following homepage http://tors.ku.dk/forskning/eskimologi/projekter/
Postdoc Mikkel Eskjær: Climate Change in a Globalized Public Sphere
The project is based on a comparative analysis of international news media, aiming at investigating how the climate change issue has become an integrated part of the international news agenda. This pertains to both foreign and domestic news, thereby illustrating how climate change is emerging as an increasingly global frame of reference in political discussions.
The project also points out how international media coverage of climate change is subject to significant regional variations, both in terms of the numbers of news reports as well as the degree of discursive variation. These communicative variations can to a certain extent be traced back to differences between regional media systems (including institutional constraints and journalistic practices). However, they also represent a (democratic) challenge to the global distribution and access to international climate change communication.
Postdoc Mikkel Sørensen: Climate change and human strategy: Arctic hunter-gatherer in a long term perspective
How did climate change affect Arctic human societies in prehistory? And, which strategies and responses were traditionally employed by Inuit to endure and succeed climate change?
Two cases studies of past Inuit societies are carried out in order to analyse these questions: 1) in high-Arctic Northeast Greenland, where Inuit lived from 1400-1850 AD. 2) in low Arctic central west Greenland where Inuit lived from 1200 AD and up till today.
Arctic societies today face a general long term climate warming, which will affect their environment and society. Thus, analysing and bringing up to date past human strategies in the Arctic, gives meaning to the present day discussion, on how modern Arctic societies are going to contend with climate change. The project involves archaeological, geographical and zoological data and employs a broad range of regional climate proxies.
PhD Scholar Lill Rastad Bjørst: Arctic Discourses and Climate Change in Greenland
PhD student Lill Rastad Bjørst - from the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies - is writing her thesis on Arctic discourses and climate change in Greenland. The global climate is changing radically and the related political and scientific debate has intensified considerably over the last years. In these debates, Inuits are often presented as the frontline witnesses to and victims of what is considered ‘the great catastrophe’ around the world. A core hypothesis of the thesis is that the climate debate has also given the Inuits a unique and unexpected political platform, wherefrom they have an opportunity to react creatively on the international arena.
PhD Scholar Gregers Andersen: Climate Disaster in the Literary Imagination
In the last two decades a steadily larger number of fictional works have been published that imagine a future where the planet is pestered by disastrous climatic events. These works form an important set of keys that can help us unlock the deeper cultural meaning of our climate change imaginaries. The aim of the project is therefore to research this new literary field in order to provide a better understanding of what it means to be human in a time where climate change is starting to reshape the aesthetical, ethical and political foundations of our lives.