Weathered: Cultures of Climate [Paperback]

Climate is an enduring idea of the human mind and also a powerful one.  Today, the idea of climate is most commonly associated with the discourse of climate-change and its scientific, political, economic, social, religious and ethical dimensions.  However, to understand adequately the cultural politics of climate-change it is important to establish the different origins of the idea of climate itself and the range of historical, political and cultural work that the idea of climate accomplishes.

In Weathered: Cultures of Climate, distinguished professor Mike Hulme opens up the many ways in which the idea of climate is given shape and meaning in different human cultures – how climates are historicized, known, changed, lived with, blamed, feared, represented, predicted, governed and, at least putatively, re-designed.

Mike Hulme’s wise and well-crafted book encircles the idea of climate from a series of perspectives, showing its elusive nature from a welter of examples. As the argument develops, we see how climate is embedded in multiple cultures, histories, and knowledges about nature. We are shown how our views of climate depend on personal experiences, scientific models, inherited tropes, and political interest. Each chapter reflects a turn of the kaleidoscope, gradually making the reader see both the complexity and the singularity of each image. Hulme’s remarkable achievement is to humanise climate, without losing sight of the larger challenges; this is where the book cannot but affect the reader.