Abstract
One of the many dimensions of globalization is climate change that in recent years has caused much concern in the developed world. The aim of this article is to explore how people living on the margins of the global world conceive climate change. Drawing on ethnographic field data from the 1980s and today it examines how the ritual practice and the religious belief of a rural community in the Peruvian Andes has changed during the last 27 years and how the villagers perceive this change. It argues that the villagers traditionally conceive the environment as co-habited by humans and non-humans but that recent environmental change in the Andes has caused a shift in this world-view. Today, many villagers have adopted the global vocabulary on climate change and are concerned with their own impact in the environment. However, the villagers reject the idea that it is human activities in other parts of the world that cause environmental problems in their community and claim that these must be addressed locally. It suggests that even though the villagers’ reluctance to subscribe to the global discourse of climate change makes them look like the companions of climate skeptics in the developed world, their reasons are very different.
Highlights
One of the many faces of globalization is climate change and the impact it has on the environment.As with other globalization processes, climate change affects social life everywhere; yet people experience it very differently
How is climate change perceived in other parts of the world and, in particular, how do the people who are most vulnerable to global warming account for its impact on their environment? Do they share the dominating view in the developed world that climate change can be attributed to human activities and current processes of modernization and globalization? Or do they associate it with other forms of change in their surrounding? And how does global warming challenge their world-view and concept of the environment?
The aim of the article has been to uncover an explanation for and engagement with climate change that is distinct from the dominating discourses on global warming
Summary
One of the many faces of globalization is climate change and the impact it has on the environment. As with other globalization processes, climate change affects social life everywhere; yet people experience it very differently. In the developed world, where many conceive global warming as a Religions 2013, 4 major threat to not merely the physical environment and human life, scientists, reporters and policymakers often use climate change as a crystal ball to read the future challenges of a globalizing world [1]. How is climate change perceived in other parts of the world and, in particular, how do the people who are most vulnerable to global warming account for its impact on their environment? Do they share the dominating view in the developed world that climate change can be attributed to human activities and current processes of modernization and globalization? How is climate change perceived in other parts of the world and, in particular, how do the people who are most vulnerable to global warming account for its impact on their environment? Do they share the dominating view in the developed world that climate change can be attributed to human activities and current processes of modernization and globalization? Or do they associate it with other forms of change in their surrounding? And how does global warming challenge their world-view and concept of the environment?
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