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E-book Changing Seasonality : How Communities are Revising their Seasons

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Penilaian

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Planetary scientists suspect that, when young, our planet met with an enormouscelestial body in a random collision that tilted the earth’s rotational axis relativeto its orbital plane around the sun. This tilt has since determined which parts ofour globe are most exposed to solar radiation at different points in its solar cir-cuit, as a key physical pattern dictating the annual cycles of life on this planet. Ata fundamental, material level we humans have evolved as seasonal animals, in-teracting with other seasonal species in a seasonally-cycling loop (1).“Seasons . . .will always be there as long as the earth is tilting”(2).But in this book we are less interested in ideas of seasons as eternal laws ofnature, and more focused on how seasons affect peoples’patterns of thinking,feeling and acting,as part of our cultures. As human communities physicallyevolved in a seasonal environment, so have their cultures likewise evolved to re-flect this seasonality (1, 3, 4). Seasons culturally affect how we relate to our envi-ronment and to each other, and as these relations change–through shifts inresources, in governments, worldviews, technologies and skills, economic trade,and so on–so too do our seasonal frameworks. Our cultures affect the annualpatterns we notice as meaningful for us, the values and emotions we attach toperiods of the year and argue about, and the activities and festivities that wepractice and coordinate at the‘right time’each year. Those frameworks providea repertoire for how to tell the time of the year and live seasonally (5, 6).This is an important point of departure for this book, for readers to recon-sider seasons as cultural, because it implies that how we live seasonally is notonly determined by‘the tilt’. It is also up to us–as individuals and communities–to (consciously and unconsciously) choose how we relate to seasons. Much ofwhat we associate with seasons–the signs that cue seasons, the festivals, trea-sured seasonal activities, our diets and so on–have been settled on and madesignificant by human communities. They are the seasons we choose to see.How then do we choose to respond when, in turbulent times, our seasonalcultures no longer hold? How do we adapt as the patterns we are accustomed tosmudge together, and we lose our sense of seasonality?Studies worldwide show us that communities today are critically re-examiningtheir seasonal cultures and calendars to better adapt to fast-changing seasonal real-ities in the places they live (7, 8). Communities find themselves in a unique momentof accelerated and intersecting processes of changes–from climate change to glob-alisation–which are destabilizing seasonal frameworks as templates for timely ac-tion. Put simply, peoples’activities are poorly coordinated in time, and they feel they can no longer rely on cultural cues for knowing the right time to act. Thereare increasing accounts of populations whose seasonal activities no longer synch tothe rhythms they track, endangering peoples’livelihoods and compounding haz-ards (9, 10). We see for instance: farming practices disconnected from a changingclimate; fishing rhythms upset by altered ocean habitats; festivals losing meaningin an increasingly diverse society; or iconic seasonal tools made obsolete with ad-vances in science and technology.Now is an important moment to reflect on what seasonality means for us.How communities revise their seasonal cultures to reattune to the rhythms thatmatter to them is an importantadaptation challenge. It is about how people altertheir way of life to not just survive but thrive in heavily modified environmentsand rapidly changing societies, with a view to long-term sustainability. In thissense, this book links up to a small but growing number of scholars worldwidewho are studying culture as a key capacity that avails communities to adapt toglobal environmental change (9); to cope and re-adjust to disruptions in the sea-sonal conditions that community life has been patterned to.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

529 BRE c

Penerbit

Berlin : De Gruyter., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

269 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783111245591

Klasifikasi

529

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Chronology

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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