The Cultural Complexity of Carbon

Green Transformations in Contemporary Society

Steffen Dalsgaard, Andy Lautrup, Katinka A. Schyberg, Ingmar Lippert

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040330975
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Conservation & Protection
• Index: Biological Sciences

This volume discusses the transformational role that carbon – both as a concept and as a distinct set of material forms and effects – has come to play in social and cultural life.

As a proxy for greenhouse gas emission data, carbon has grown to become a phenomenon that can no longer be accounted for solely within the technoscientific vocabulary of climate scientists. The Cultural Complexity of Carbon examines the extent to which our knowledge of carbon affects the way that human beings relate to each other and to the climate and/or the environment. It draws on case studies from a diverse range of topics including peatland restoration, religion and energy systems to explore questions that have so far been under-explored in the current literature. These questions include whether the recognition of carbon's role in climate change leads to an incremental adaptation of lifestyles or to cultural or existential transformations, but also more concretely how carbon is made meaningful, and how these meanings are attached to ideals of cultural change or continuity. Spanning multiple perspectives and disciplinary positions, this volume provides a go-to point for the next generation of ethnographic studies of carbon and climate change. It cuts across what has hitherto been largely separate literatures in anthropology, geography and sociology to provide a meta-level orientation to how contemporary narratives of the role of carbon are being told.

By addressing the intimate social and cultural changes that stem from humanity's involvement with its natural and climatic resources, this volume is of interest to students and scholars of climate change within the social sciences and environmental humanities.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction: Carbon and culture change
• 1 Renewable energy communities for energy-poor households: Policy mobility challenges in urban and peri-urban European contexts
• 2 Carbon footprint calculators and behaviour change
• 3 Configuring the carbon farmer: Emerging practices of carbon accounting and biochar engagements in Danish agriculture
• 4 The footprint of anarchy: Counting carbon in the Church
• 5 Carbon in Chinese notions of ecological civilization: Policy of quantification or philosophy of promise?
• 6 The social life of peat carbon and peat frontier making: An ethnographic study of peatland restoration in Central Kalimantan
• 7 La#oma’s pre- and post-carbon landscape: The ont*-politics of a vanished village
• 8 Scaling the world through carbon: Discursive decoupling, unity and climate responsibility in Stavanger, Norway
• Index