Climate Change as Social Drama

Philip Smith is Professor of Sociology and co-Director of the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. His work explores the meaningful nature of social life as it plays out in a communicative public sphere. He is author of Why War? (2005) and Punishment and Culture (2008) and co-author of Incivility: The Rude Stranger in Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press, 2010), as well as a dozen other books and edited collections. Nicolas Howe is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Williams College, where he is also affiliated with the American Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. His work explores the cultural and religious dimensions of modern environmental thought from the perspective of cultural geography. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

• 1. Introduction: the problem of climate change; 2. Climate change as social drama; 3. Narrating global warming; 4. An inconvenient truth: the power of ethos; 5. Climate change art: an illustrative failure?; 6. 'Climategate' and other controversies; 7. The climate conference as theatre; 8. Local dramas: the places of climate change; 9. Conclusion: the show must go on.

'Climate Change as Social Drama brings the powerful theoretical approaches developed by cultural sociology to the study of climate change. Through a detailed rhetorical analysis of key areas of contention, Philip Smith and Nicolas Howe provide a unique and insightful perspective on the contentious debate on climate change. This intellectual intervention provides a new way to think about this issue, as well as contribut[ing] to the development of cultural sociology. Kudos to Smith and Howe.' Robert J. Brulle, Drexel University, Philadelphia