Localising Global Climate Change Policies in Vanuatu: Reception of Knowledge and Cultural Transformations

全球人为气候变化不仅以环境变化的形式影响着全世界的人们，而且作为一种最广泛意义上的文化现象，包括新兴的知识流动和不同地方和尺度之间的相互作用。该研究项目的重点是关于气候变化的全球辩论所产生的三个事态发展的影响：为有助于减轻或启动或促进适应人类生活方式以应对气候变化的不利影响而采取的具体措施；通过媒体传播有关气候变化的信息和观点，并引入法律和经济变化。本研究项目的主要目的是调查与这些新发展相关的两个过程。首先，它调查了当地行动者如何接受他们所面对的知识，以及他们在接受过程中如何解释和转化它，包括他们是否以及为什么拒绝或采用它。其次，它关注随后的文化变化，特别是基本本体论概念的潜在转变。这些观点构成了一种将气候变化视为一种文化现象的创新方式，允许考虑迄今为止人类学气候变化研究尚未包括的方面和被忽视的过程。该研究项目的结果将有助于推动社会和文化人类学在人与环境关系的变化和持续以及与正在进行的本体论转变有关的领域的理论辩论。该研究项目将在太平洋岛国瓦努阿图进行，在这个国家，气候变化问题已经在政治层面讨论了十多年，自最近以来，该国正在开展许多发展项目，旨在促进瓦努阿图人民适应气候变化。将在瓦努阿图的两个地方进行民族志实地调查，在此期间将采用若干不同的定性方法。该研究将由申请人和一名研究助理/博士生进行，作为小组研究和个人研究的结合，以便考虑到男女严格分开的领域以及瓦努阿图的其他文化差异，例如农村和城市地区之间的差异。

Global anthropogenic climate change impacts people worldwide not only in the form of environmental changes but also as a cultural phenomenon in the broadest sense, including emerging knowledge flows and interactions between various places and scales. The research project concentrates on effects of three developments which result from global debates on climate change: Concrete measures which are undertaken to contribute to mitigation or to initiate or promote adaptation of human ways of life in order to encounter adverse impacts of climate change; the spread of information and views on climate change by media and the introduction of legal and economic changes. The primary aim of this research project is to investigate two processes that are connected to these new developments. First, it investigates how local actors receive knowledge with which they are confronted, and how they interpret and transform it during the reception process, including whether and why they refuse or adopt it. Second, it focuses on the subsequent cultural changes and particularly on the potential transformations of fundamental ontological concepts. These perspectives constitute an innovative way of looking at climate change as a cultural phenomenon, allowing consideration of aspects that have not been included and processes that have been neglected by anthropological climate change research to date. The results of the research project will contribute to an advancement of the theoretical debate in social and cultural anthropology in the field of change and persistence of human-environment relations and in relation to ongoing ontological transformations. The research project will be conducted in the Pacific island state of Vanuatu - a country where climate change has been discussed at a political level for more than a decade, and where since the recent past numerous development projects are currently being carried out aiming to facilitate an adaptation to climate change for the population of Vanuatu. Ethnographic fieldwork will be undertaken in two places in Vanuatu, during which a number of different qualitative methods are employed. It will be conducted by the applicant and a research assistant/doctoral student as combination of team and individual research in order to give consideration to the strictly separate domains of men and women and additionally of other cultural differences in Vanuatu, for instance those between rural and urban regions.