Abstract
Time is a central theoretical resource for climate change science, climate policies, social actions addressing climate change problems, and shaping concepts of uncertainty and ambiguity. This paper presents a debate on how different epistemic climate science communities deal with the concept of time by considering the social construction of climate imageries. To do so, we undertake two case studies on how China and Brazil’s climate communities have shaped situated knowledge based on different historical social experiences that created different modes of dealing with climate change: China has created a concept of time based on practical climate experiences, while Brazil has developed a futuristic sense of how the climate will behave in the future. Finally, we address the idea of cosmopolitan climate imageries originated from hybrid forums and constructed by stocks of knowledge which have been shared transhistorically by different epistemic communities towards a common climate governance.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adam, Barbara. 1990. Time and social theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Adam, Barbara. 1995. Timewatch: the social analysis of time. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Adam, Barbara. 1998. Timescapes of modernity: the environment and invisible hazards. London/New York: Routledge.
Ambrizzi, Tercio 2013. Grupo de Trabalho 1: Bases Cientí́ficas. Apresentação na 1a Conferência Nacional de Mudanças Climáticas Globais São Paulo. FAPESP 09 a 13 de setembro.
Araújo, José Newton. 2004. Tempo do sujeito, tempo do mundo, tempo da clínica. Revista Mal Estar e Subjetividade 4 (2): 235–250.
Assad, Eduardo D and Magalhães, A.R. 2013. Grupo de Trabalho 2: Impactos, Vulnerabilidade e Adaptaç̧ão à̀s Mudanças Climá́ticas. Apresentação na 1a Conferência Nacional de Mudanç̧̧ãs Climáticas Globais São Paulo. FAPESP 09 a 13 de setembro.
Beck, Ulrich. 2008. La sociedad del riesgo mundial: En busca de la seguridad perdida. Barcelona: Paidós Editorial.
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk society: towards a new modernity. London: Sage Publications.
Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. 1994. Reflexive modernization: politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. London: Stanford University Press.
Bergson, Henri. 1990. Matéria e memória. São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Biermann, Franck, et al. 2012. Navigating the anthropocene: improving earth system governance. Science 335 (6074): 1306–1307.
Biermann, Franck, et al. 2014. Governance in the anthropocene: towards planetary stewardship. At the 4th Interactive Dialogue of the United Nations General Assembly on Harmony with Nature. New York City 22 April.
Bolin, Bert. 2007. A history of the science and politics of climate change: the role of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The logic of practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brague, Rémi. 2006. O tempo em Platão e Aristóteles. São Paulo: Loyola.
Rudolf, Brázdil, et al. 2005. Historical climatology in Europe—the state of the art. Climatic Change 70 (3): 363–430.
Caseldine, Chris. 2012. Conceptions of time in (paleo)climate science and some implications. WIREs Clim Change 3 (4): 329–338.
Castellano, Marina and Nunes, Lucí. 2010. Impactos de chuvas na cidade de Campinas, SP, tendências sócio-espaciais em 50 anos. In: Simp. Bras. de Climatologia Geográfica, 9, Fortaleza, CE.
Chen, Xing. 2008. Paleoclimate of China. In Regional climate studies of China, ed. C. Fu, et al. London: Springer.
Curry, Judith and Peter Webster. 2011. Climate science and the uncertainty monster. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 92: 1667–1682.
Ehrlich, Paul and Ehrlich, Anne 2013. Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: 280.
Elias, Norbert. 1993. O processo civilizador---formação do estado e civilização, vol. 1. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.
Elias, Norbert. 1994. A sociedade dos indivíduos. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.
Elias, Norbert. 1989. Sobre el tiempo. México: Fondo de Cultura Econômica.
Fan, Ka-Wai. 2010. Climatic change and dynastic cycles in China history: a review essay. Climate Change 101 (3): 565–573.
Fan, Ka-Wai. 2015. Climate change and Chinese history: a review of trends, topics, and methods. WIREs Climate Change 6 (2): 225–238.
Fang, Jin-Qi. 1992. Establishment of a data bank from records of climate disasters and anomalies in ancient Chinese documents. International Journal of Climatology 12 (5): 499–519.
FAPESP. 2011. Research to advance the knowledge on climate change. São Paulo: FAPESP.
Ferreira, Leila da Costa et al. 2014. Global Environmental Changes: environmental policies in China with reference to Brazil. XVIII World Congress of Sociology. Yokohama 13–19 July.
Fetz, Marcelo. 2012. Entre razão e fruição: a formação da ciência romântica na segunda revolução científica. Tese de Doutorado em Sociologia: Universidade Estadual de Campinas.
Fischer, David. 1980. Climate and history: priorities for research. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10 (4): 821–830.
Ge, Quansheng, et al. 2008. Coherence of climate reconstruction from historical documents in China by different studies. International Journal of Climatology 28 (8): 1007–1024.
Ge, Quansheng, et al. 2005. Reconstruction of historical climate in China: high resolution precipitation data from Qing dynasty archives. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 86 (5): 671–679.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1999. Verdade e método I: esboço de uma hermenêutica filosófica. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. As consequências da modernidade. São Paulo: Editora Unesp.
Gleick, Peter, et al. 2010. Climate change and the integrity of science. Letter to the editor Science 328 (5979): 689–690.
Heymann, Matthias. 2010. The evolution of climate ideas and knowledge. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1 (4): 581–597.
Huang, Chun Huang, et al. 2009. Climate change and Zhou relocations in early Chinese history. Journal Historical Georgraphy 35 (2): 297–310.
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why we disagree about climate change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2001. Image and imagination: the formation of global environmental consciousness. In Changing the atmosphere: expert knowledge and environmental governance, ed. C.E. Miller, and P. Edwards. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2010. A new climate for society. Theory Culture Society 27 (2–3): 233–253.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2005. Designs on nature: science and democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jasanoff, Sheila, and Kim Sang-Hyun. 2015. Dreamscapes of Modernity: sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. London: The University of Chicago Press.
Jiang, Dabang, et al. 2015. Paleoclimate modeling in China: a review. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 32 (2): 250–275.
Jones, Phil. 2008. Historical climatology: a state of the art review. Weather 63 (7): 181–186.
Kant, Immanuel. 2001. Crítica da Razão Pura. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Lacey, Hugh. 1972. A linguagem do espaço e do tempo. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Liu, Ts’ui-jung. 2013. A retrospection of climate changes and their impacts in Chinese history. In Nature, environment and culture in East Asia: the challenge of climate change, ed. Meinert, Carmen. Leiden: Brill.
Mccormick, Michael. 2011. History´s changing climate: climate science, genomics, and the emerging consilient approach to interdisciplinary history. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 42 (2): 251–273.
Newton, Isaac. 1990. Principia: Princípios matemáticos de filosofia natural. São Paulo: Nova Stella/EDUSP.
Nobre, Carlos, et al. 2010. Vulnerabilidade das megacidades brasileiras as mudanças climáticas: região metropolitana de São Paulo. Sumário Executivo. CCST-Inpe, Unicamp, USP, IPT, Unesp.
Nobre, Carlos, et al. 2010. Addressing the complexity of the Earth System. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 91 (1): 1377–1388.
Nobre, Carlos, 2013. Brazilian Earth System Model: history, challenges, status. Apresentação na 1a Conferência Nacional de Mudanças Climáticas Globais São Paulo. São Paulo, FAPESP, de 09 a 13 de setembro.
Pahl, Sabine, et al. 2014. Perceptions of time in relation to climate change. WIREs Climate Change 5 (3): 375–388.
Peters, Glen, et al. 2013. The challenge to keep global warming below 2°C. Nature Climate Change 3: 4–6.
Randalls, Samuel. 2010. History of the 2C climate target. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1 (4): 598–605.
Rede Clima 2015. Website http://redeclima.ccst.inpe.br/. Accessed in August 2015.
Siffedine Abdelfettah 2014. Informações paleoclimatológicas brasileiras. In: Ambrizzi, T., Araujo, T. (Eds.) PBMC. Base científica das mudanças climáticas: Contribuição do Grupo de Trabalho 1 do Painel Brasileiro de Mudanças Climáticas ao Primeiro Relatório da Avaliação Nacional sobre Mudanças Climáticas. COPPE. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Schneider, Stephen, Armin Rosencranz, and John O. Niles. 2002. Climate change policy: a survey. Washington D.C.: Island Press.
Steffen, Will, et al. 2011. The Anthropocene: from global change to planetary stewardship. Ambio 40 (7): 739–761.
Tabboni, Simonetta. 2001. The Idea of Social Time in Norbert Elias. Time Society 10 (1): 5–27.
Wood, Charles. 2008. Time, cycles and tempos in social-ecological research and environmental policy. Time Society 17 (2–3): 261–282.
Yearley, Steven. 2009. Sociology and Climate Change after Kyoto: what roles for social science in understanding climate change? Current Sociology 57 (3): 389–410.
Zhang, David D., et al. 2006. Climatic change, wars and dynastic cycles in China over the last millennium. Climate Change 76 (3): 459–477.
Zhang, David D., et al. 2007a. Global climate change, war, and population decline in recent human history. Proceedings to National Academy of Sciences 104 (49): 19214–19219.
Zhang, Qiang, et al. 2007b. Flood/drought change of last millennium in the Yangtze Delta and its possible connections with Tibetan climatic changes. Global Planet Changes 57 (3–4): 213–221.
Zhang, Xuezhen, et al. 2007c. Perception records on cold/warm in Weng Tonghe Diary and its significance to cold/warm variation. Journal Paleogeorgraphy 9: 439–446.
Zhang, DeEr, et al. 2010. On linking climate to Chinese dynastic change: spatial and temporal variations of monsoonal rain. Chinese Science Bulletin 55 (1): 77–83.
Zheng, Jingyun, et al. 2014. How climate change impacted the collapse of the Ming dynasty. Climate Change 127 (2): 127–169.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fetz, M., Bosco, E. & Palmieri, E. Cosmopolitan Temporalities: A Sociological Analysis on Climate Imageries in Brazil and China. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 11, 49–68 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-017-0180-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-017-0180-0