How Diverse Publics Understand Climate Change: An Interview with Candis Callison guelph public library (Part One)
The debate about climate guelph public library change can often seem perplexing for those of us who take the foundations of modern science seriously. We can become deeply cynical about why certain players refuse to accept guelph public library “established truths” and become frustrated by the inability of governments to act decisively to curtail behaviors that are helping to create guelph public library long-term “risks” for the future of humanity and the planet. Yet, we are never going to make progress in such debates, Candis Callison argues, unless we understand what she calls “the communal life of facts,” unless guelph public library we develop a deeper understanding of the different epistemological commitments held by diverse players in this argument. Candis Callison’s recently released book, How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts , is a spectacular example of how ethnographic work, especially work informed by the science, technology, and society perspective, might inform our ongoing debates around the environment. Here’s what I said in a blurb for the book:
“A gifted storyteller who brings enormous empathy and nuance to each group she documents, Candis Callison depicts the current discursive struggles over climate change, guelph public library as such diverse players as corporate responsibility advocates, evangelical guelph public library Christians, and Inuit tribal leaders, not to mention scientists and journalists, seek to reconcile the need for dramatic change with their existing guelph public library sets of professional norms and cultural values. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how science gets refracted across an increasingly diverse media landscape and for anyone who wants to understand how they might be more effective at changing entrenched beliefs and practices.”
Callison’s work ultimately raises core questions guelph public library around the public communication of science, sharing insights around how advocates and activists might transform this debate. Before she gets there, she seeks first to understand in subtle and complicated ways why these various players believe what they take to be true about our relationships with the natural world. As she does so, she develops a robust guelph public library account of different “vernacular” models of climate change that have to be aligned before we can make progress in dealing with these concerns. We are speaking past each other because we see the world in such fundamentally different ways and we will never convince each other unless guelph public library we understand the diverse languages through which this debate is being conducted. This books makes an important intervention into what remains one of the central controversies of our time.
I read this book with much personal satisfaction. I had been lucky enough to work with Candis Callison, when she was a masters student in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program more than a decade ago, having come to us with an already established professional career as an award-winning journalist. She went on to complete her PhD in Science, Technology, and Society, also at MIT. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Graduate School of Journalism and How Climate Change Comes to Matter is her first book, based in part on her dissertation research. Callison was already an intellectual leader in her graduate cohort in part because of the enormous respect the faculty and other students had for her deep ethical and political commitments, including her desire to use her scholarship in the service of the indigenous community where she grew up in Canada. I am so proud of the kind of scholar she has become.
Your introduction suggests that you are seeking to better understand a range of vernacular accounts of climate change. How are you defining guelph public library vernaculars and what do you see as the relationship between scientific expertise and these more popular modes of describing guelph public library environmental issues?
First of all, thanks for reading my book and for the kind words you say about it. I m deeply grateful I got to start my graduate life at MIT in Comparative Media Studies. CMS and your Media Theory class are what started me on a path to thinking more broadly about the many and diverse roles media play in, with, and around public engagement.
I started contemplating using the term, vernacular, because of what I experienced when I talked guelph public library with people who were actively working to mobilize their concerns about climate change. The ways they were talking about climate change drew to a great extent on how they experienced the world, what mattered to them, and how they conceived of a future they wanted for themselves, their social group and often, for society as well.
What was really interesting to think about is how very different concerns related to climate change sound in other contexts. For corporate social responsibility advocates working with Wall
The debate about climate guelph public library change can often seem perplexing for those of us who take the foundations of modern science seriously. We can become deeply cynical about why certain players refuse to accept guelph public library “established truths” and become frustrated by the inability of governments to act decisively to curtail behaviors that are helping to create guelph public library long-term “risks” for the future of humanity and the planet. Yet, we are never going to make progress in such debates, Candis Callison argues, unless we understand what she calls “the communal life of facts,” unless guelph public library we develop a deeper understanding of the different epistemological commitments held by diverse players in this argument. Candis Callison’s recently released book, How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts , is a spectacular example of how ethnographic work, especially work informed by the science, technology, and society perspective, might inform our ongoing debates around the environment. Here’s what I said in a blurb for the book:
“A gifted storyteller who brings enormous empathy and nuance to each group she documents, Candis Callison depicts the current discursive struggles over climate change, guelph public library as such diverse players as corporate responsibility advocates, evangelical guelph public library Christians, and Inuit tribal leaders, not to mention scientists and journalists, seek to reconcile the need for dramatic change with their existing guelph public library sets of professional norms and cultural values. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how science gets refracted across an increasingly diverse media landscape and for anyone who wants to understand how they might be more effective at changing entrenched beliefs and practices.”
Callison’s work ultimately raises core questions guelph public library around the public communication of science, sharing insights around how advocates and activists might transform this debate. Before she gets there, she seeks first to understand in subtle and complicated ways why these various players believe what they take to be true about our relationships with the natural world. As she does so, she develops a robust guelph public library account of different “vernacular” models of climate change that have to be aligned before we can make progress in dealing with these concerns. We are speaking past each other because we see the world in such fundamentally different ways and we will never convince each other unless guelph public library we understand the diverse languages through which this debate is being conducted. This books makes an important intervention into what remains one of the central controversies of our time.
I read this book with much personal satisfaction. I had been lucky enough to work with Candis Callison, when she was a masters student in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program more than a decade ago, having come to us with an already established professional career as an award-winning journalist. She went on to complete her PhD in Science, Technology, and Society, also at MIT. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Graduate School of Journalism and How Climate Change Comes to Matter is her first book, based in part on her dissertation research. Callison was already an intellectual leader in her graduate cohort in part because of the enormous respect the faculty and other students had for her deep ethical and political commitments, including her desire to use her scholarship in the service of the indigenous community where she grew up in Canada. I am so proud of the kind of scholar she has become.
Your introduction suggests that you are seeking to better understand a range of vernacular accounts of climate change. How are you defining guelph public library vernaculars and what do you see as the relationship between scientific expertise and these more popular modes of describing guelph public library environmental issues?
First of all, thanks for reading my book and for the kind words you say about it. I m deeply grateful I got to start my graduate life at MIT in Comparative Media Studies. CMS and your Media Theory class are what started me on a path to thinking more broadly about the many and diverse roles media play in, with, and around public engagement.
I started contemplating using the term, vernacular, because of what I experienced when I talked guelph public library with people who were actively working to mobilize their concerns about climate change. The ways they were talking about climate change drew to a great extent on how they experienced the world, what mattered to them, and how they conceived of a future they wanted for themselves, their social group and often, for society as well.
What was really interesting to think about is how very different concerns related to climate change sound in other contexts. For corporate social responsibility advocates working with Wall
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