Rural geography II: Scalar and social constructionist perspectives on climate change adaptation and rural resilience

Abstract

This report considers rural geography scholarship in relation to the field of climate change adaptation. While applied perspectives on the modelling and mapping of the potential impacts of climate change-related hazard events on rural localities continue to be an important research theme, more theoretically sophisticated and interpretivist approaches are providing more challenging understandings of the multi-scalar nature of climate change adaptation processes, from the micro-scale of the farm operator to the global scale of shifting climate regimes. Social constructivism is being deployed to critique taken-for-granted interpretations of the natural processes underlying regionally-specific climate change impacts, further broadening the ontological and epistemological lens of the sub-discipline. Rural geography continues to be a fertile sub-disciplinary field for theoretical and methodological experimentation.