Berghahn Books Logo

berghahn New York · Oxford

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram

Climate Change: Readings & Responses

We are pleased to present a selection of books and journal articles on the theme of climate change and responses to it. This is the first in an on-going series of focused collections designed to aid academics teaching specific courses or researching particular areas. To be kept up-to-date with our latest titles choose your subject preferences here


New and Forthcoming Hardbacks and Paperbacks: 

The Anthroposcene of Weather and Climate: Ethnographic Contributions to the Climate Change Debate edited by Paul Sillitoe 

Contributors from communities around the world discuss local knowledge of, and responses to, environmental changes that need to feature in scientifically framed policies regarding mitigation and adaptation measures if they are to be effective. 

Cooling Down: Local Responses to Global Climate Change edited by Susanna M. Hoffman, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Paulo Mendes 

Climate change is a slowly advancing crisis sweeping over the planet and affecting different habitats in strikingly diverse ways. While nations have signed treaties and implemented policies, most actual climate change assessments, adaptations, and countermeasures take place at the local level. This book portrays the diversity of explanations and remedies as expressed at the community level. 

The Russian Cold: Histories of Ice, Frost, and Snow edited by Julia Herzberg, Andreas Renner, and Ingrid Schierle 

Cold has long been a fixture of Russian identity both within and beyond the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union, even as the ongoing effects of climate change complicate its meaning and cultural salience. The Russian Cold assembles fascinating new contributions from a variety of scholarly traditions, offering new perspectives on how to understand this mainstay of Russian culture and history. 

Constructing Risk: Disaster, Development, and the Built Environment by Stephen O. Bender 

Reviewing current policies and practices, the book assesses the financial, economic and physical risk of building in hazardous areas, and looks at how societies approach economic development while trying to create a more resilient built environment in spite of the dangers. 

Key Backlist

Open Access: 

Ethnographies of Power: A Political Anthropology of Energy edited by Tristan Loloum, Simone Abram and Nathalie Ortar 

Brings together ethnographic studies of contemporary entanglements of energy and political power. Revisiting classic anthropological notions of power, it asks how changing energy related infrastructures are implicated in the consolidation, extension or subversion of contemporary political regimes and discovers what they tell us about politics today. 

Contextualizing Disaster edited by Gregory V. Button and Mark Schuller 

Offers a comparative analysis of six recent “highly visible” disasters and several slow-burning, “hidden,” crises that include typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical spills, and the unfolding consequences of rising seas and climate change. 

Paperbacks: 

Sustaining Russia’s Artic Cities: Resource Politics, Migration, and Climate Change edited by Robert Orttung 

Urban areas in Arctic Russia are experiencing unprecedented social and ecological change. This collection outlines the key challenges that city managers will face in navigating this shifting political, economic, social, and environmental terrain. 

Sustainable Development: An Appraisal from the Gulf Region edited by Paul Sillitoe 

With growing evidence of unsustainable use of the world’s resources, such as hydrocarbon reserves, and related environmental pollution, as in alarming climate change predictions, sustainable development is arguably the prominent issue of the 21st century.  This volume gives a wide ranging introduction focusing on the arid Gulf region, where the challenges of sustainable development are starkly evident. 

Open Access Journal Articles: 

It’s time to (climate) change the way we teach: Addressing anthropogenic climate change in social science classrooms by Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet (in Learning and Teaching

Jewish Law, Roman Law, and the Accordance of Hospitality to Refugees and Climate-Change Migrants by Gilad Ben-Nun (in Migration and Society

Civilization as the Undesired World: Radical Environmentalism and the Uses of Dystopia in Times of Climate Crisis by Stine Krøijer (in Social Analysis

Navigating Shifting Regimes of Ocean Governance: From UNCLOS to Sustainable Development Goal 14 by Ana K. Spalding and Ricardo de Ycaza (in Environment and Society

Nature and Culture Journal Articles: 

Overconsumption as Ideology: Implications for Addressing Global Climate Change by Diana Stuart, Ryan Gunderson, and Brian Petersen 

Transition as Cultural Revitalization: Exploring Social Motives for Environmental Movement Participation by Anna J. Willow 

Symbolizing Destruction: Environmental Activism, Moral Shocks, and the Coal Industry by Alison E. Adams, Thomas E. Shriver, and Landen Longest  

Narratives of Socioecological Transition: The Case of the Transition Network in Portugal by Vera Ferreira and António Carvalho  

Automobility and Oil Vulnerability: Unfairness as Critical to Energy Transitions by Ana Horta