Nature Environmental Conservation & Protection
Climate, Culture, Change
Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North
- Publisher
- University of Ottawa Press
- Initial publish date
- Feb 2011
- Category
- Environmental Conservation & Protection, Native American Studies
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780776619392
- Publish Date
- Feb 2011
- List Price
- $14.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780776607504
- Publish Date
- Jan 2011
- List Price
- $29.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Every day brings new headlines about climate change as politicians debate how to respond, scientists offer new data, and skeptics critique the validity of the research. To step outside these scientific and political debates, Timothy Leduc engages with various Inuit understandings of northern climate change. What he learns is that today’s climate changes are not only affecting our environments, but also our cultures. By focusing on the changes currently occurring in the north, he highlights the challenges being posed to Western climate research, Canadian politics and traditional Inuit knowledge.
Climate, Culture, Change sheds light on the cultural challenges posed by northern warming and proposes an intercultural response that is demonstrated by the blending of Inuit and Western perspectives.
About the author
Timothy B. Leduc is associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of A Canadian Climate of Mind.
Awards
- Short-listed, Canada Prize, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Editorial Reviews
"Fascinating." -- The Ecologist
“After Copenhagen would be a fitting title for this splendid and much-needed study of change: change in climate and, most importantly, change in and through culture. Leduc casts light on each in turn by combining interdisciplinary analyses with lucid and informed comment that is grounded in Canada but has a global scope… John Livingston’s dictum that ‘there is no technical answer to a moral problem’ is both endorsed and passionately argued for in this admirably researched and deeply visionary book.”
-- Anne Primavesi, author of Sacred Gaia, Gaia’s Gift and Gaia and Climate Change
“Climate, Culture, Change shows eloquently how climate change undermines the ecology of the North and challenges the unique knowledge of the Inuit people. If the government of Canada were to hear all its peoples, through volumes like this, perhaps Canada would begin to meet its international obligations regarding climate change.”
-- Robert C. Paehlke, author of Some Like It Cold
“Through his careful analysis of Sila, Leduc tasks us to develop conceptual frameworks to bridge the gap between indigenous and western ways of knowing to have the inter-cultural dialogues necessary to change the ways we think about climate-human relations… This book is a must read for anyone interested in how we can make the cultural leap needed to solve our present climate crisis.”
-- Susan A. Crate, editor of Anthropology and Climate Change
“Leduc’s radical, to-the-root rethinking and reframing of the climate crisis is uncompromising and exhilarating” -- Mark Dickinson, Trent University, from AlternativesJournal.ca
“Climate, Culture and Change is important reading for minds that can, in turn, influence the hearts and actions of Western populations and their political representatives in our dangerous times.”
- Christopher Hrynkow, from The Trumpeter, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2011)