Collaborative Research: Global Climate Change: Folk Models and Intracultural Variation

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This project involves the collaboration of two cultural anthropologists who will interview a relatively small sample of North American "persons-in-the-street" about their perceptions and moral evaluations of the environmental problems of global climate change. A "folk model" will be constructed that represents these beliefs, which will be compared with a similar set of interviews and model elicited from specialists whose jobs affect the environment (utility analysts, environmental lobbyists, congressional staff, and others). These data will contribute to an analysis of theoretical questions involving the pattern and meaning of intracultural variation, such as how knowledge of the mechanisms and consequences of global warming are socially distributed, and whether this knowledge consists of collections of unconnected facts or systems of propositions. This research is important because concerns about the state of the environment are gaining more significance in society. Increased understanding of the structure of popular understanding of these issues, and the moral evaluations that go along with opinions, will help policy makers understand public reactions.