Thinking Like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change

Thinking Like a Climate by Hannah Knox explores the challenges of climate change and knowledge production, and how Manchester, England is responding to them. She argues that climate science frames climate change as a social problem that requires new modes of relating to climate in order to effect change on a global scale.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 02 October 2020
Publisher: Duke University Press

In her book Thinking Like a Climate, Hannah Knox delves into the formidable challenges posed by climate change to the realms of knowledge production and modern politics. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Manchester, England—the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution—Knox examines the city's strategies for comprehending and addressing the deteriorating environmental conditions. Climate science, as Knox argues, perceives climate change as a distinct social problem that surpasses the limitations of traditional administrative and bureaucratic methods of knowing individuals, places, and things. To overcome these boundaries, she advocates for forging innovative modes of relating to climate that reimagine the social within climatological terms.

Knox's central contention is that the day-to-day work involved in crafting and implementing climate policy, as well as translating climate knowledge into governance practices, demonstrates the potential for local responses to climate change to scale up and exert a global impact. By highlighting the successes and challenges encountered in Manchester, she offers valuable insights into the scalability of local initiatives and the importance of collaboration and coordination in addressing the multifaceted challenges of climate change.

Thinking Like a Climate is a thought-provoking and insightful book that sheds light on the complex interplay between climate change, knowledge production, and politics. Through her ethnographic research, Knox provides a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, offering a roadmap for policymakers, activists, and scholars alike to navigate the challenges and opportunities of our changing climate.

Weight: 480g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478010869