Abstract
Scientific climate knowledge is often argued to be a key ingredient in climate adaptation. Focusing on individual sectors and institutions, researchers have given insights as to how climate knowledge is reframed according to institutional cultures and priorities. This study extends such scholarship by comparing how four sectors—greenspace management, building technology, spatial planning, and health—perceive, judge, transfer, and appropriate knowledge on urban heatwaves, and what adaptation options are proposed. Based on semi-structured interviews, documentary materials and observations of two workshops collected in two Swiss cities, I draw on Eviatar Zerubavel and his ‘cultural cognitive sociology’ whose work emphasises how collectively shared patterns of recognition and thinking guide and facilitate human judgement. I find two factors to influence knowledge appropriation. On the one hand, the formative dimension of knowledge underscores that experts understand climate knowledge similarly when a sector shares key concepts with climate science. If such ‘cognitive links’ are missing, the answers on how heatwaves impact experts’ work are more varied. On the other hand, the performative dimension of knowledge highlights that experts’ eagerness to adapt is influenced by diverging technical, legal, and social possibilities. When experts’ decision scope is large, then uptake of climate knowledge is more fluid. With a more explicit understanding of why sectors differ in their appropriation and integration of climate knowledge into their work, this study is a reminder that only fitting knowledge is of value to sectoral experts.
Highlights
Climate adaptation is often portrayed as a knowledge-intensive endeavour (e.g., Willows and Connell 2003; Adaptation Sub-Committee 2016)
This study extends such scholarship by comparing how four sectors—greenspace management, building technology, spatial planning, and health—perceive, judge, transfer, and appropriate knowledge on urban heatwaves, and what adaptation options are proposed
Based on semi-structured interviews, documentary materials and observations of two workshops collected in two Swiss cities, I draw on Eviatar Zerubavel and his ‘cultural cognitive sociology’ whose work emphasises how collectively shared patterns of recognition and thinking guide and facilitate human judgement
Summary
Climate adaptation is often portrayed as a knowledge-intensive endeavour (e.g., Willows and Connell 2003; Adaptation Sub-Committee 2016). The insights and conceptualisations of the Zerubavelian ‘school’ of cultural cognitive sociology (Brekhus 2007) have, not yet been applied to the question of how scientific climate knowledge gets transformed and potentially appropriated by professional experts working in sectors vulnerable to climatic changes. I compare empirically how, and more importantly why, four sectors often described as being vulnerable to urban heatwaves—building technology, greenspace management, spatial planning, and health—have appropriated scientific climate knowledge on heatwaves differently or . By drawing on the work of Zerubavel, I explain the underlying dynamics of how prior expertise and collectively shared patterns of recognition influence the uptake of, or resistance to, climate knowledge in these sectors. 2, I review three distinct areas of scholarship relevant to this study: how actors appropriate climate change and climate knowledge, the Zerubavelian cultural cognitive sociological perspective, and urban adaptation to heatwaves. I discuss how and why some sectors were able to appropriate heatwaves and give them priority, while others struggled to recognise the impact and importance of heatwaves for their work (Sect. 6)
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