Table Of ContentClimate Change Temporalities
Climate Change Temporalities explores how various timescales, timespans, in-
tervals, rhythms, cycles, and changes in acceleration are at play in climate
change discourses. It argues that nuanced, detailed, and specific understand-
ings and concepts are required to handle the challenges of a climatically
changed world, politically and socially as well as scientifically. Rather than
reflecting abstractly on theories of temporality, this edited collection ex-
plores a variety of timescales and temporalities from narratives, experience,
popular culture, and everyday life in addition to science and history – and
the entanglements between them. The chapters are clustered into three main
sections, exploring a range of genres, such as questionnaires, interviews,
magazines, news media, television series, aquariums, and popular science
books to c ritically examine how and where climate change understandings
are formed. The book also includes chapters historising notions of climate
and temporality by exploring scientific debates and practices.
Climate Change Temporalities will be of great interest to students and schol-
ars of humanistic climate change research, environmental humanities, studies
of temporality and historicity, cultural studies, cultural history, and popular
culture.
Kyrre Kverndokk is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of
Bergen, Norway.
Marit Ruge Bjærke is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Studies
at the University of Bergen, Norway.
Anne Eriksen is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo,
Norway.
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Warwick Frost
Daoism and Environmental Philosophy
Nourishing Life
Eric S. Nelson
Ecological Law and the Planetary Crisis
A Legal Guide for Harmony on Earth
Geoffrey Garver
From Environmental to Ecological Law
Kirsten Anker; Peter D Burdon; Geoffrey Garver; Michelle Maloney and
Carla Sbert
Climate Change Temporalities
Explorations in Vernacular, Popular, and Scientific Discourse
Edited by Kyrre Kverndokk, Marit Ruge Bjærke, and Anne Eriksen
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Explorations-in- Environmental-
Studies/book-series/REES
Climate Change
Temporalities
Explorations in Vernacular, Popular,
and Scientific Discourse
Edited by
Kyrre Kverndokk,
Marit Ruge Bjærke, and
Anne Eriksen
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Kyrre Kverndokk,
Marit Ruge Bjærke, and Anne Eriksen; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Kyrre Kverndokk, Marit Ruge Bjærke, and
Anne Eriksen to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-47960-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-69640-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03741-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
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Contents
List of contributors vii
List of illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
1 Climate change temporalities: narratives, genres,
and tropes 3
KYRRE KVERNDOKK AND ANNE ERIKSEN
PART 1
Vernacular notions of climate change temporality 15
2 ‘Where is global warming when you need it?’:
the role of immediacy in vernacular constructions of
climate change 17
DIANE E. GOLDSTEIN
3 The great re-skilling: understandings of generation,
tradition, and nostalgia in everyday-life climate activism 32
LONE REE MILKÆR
4 In the shadow of apocalyptic futures: climate change
as a cultural trope in vernacular discourse 49
CAMILLA ASPLUND INGEMARK
vi Contents
PART 2
Mediating climate change temporality 69
5 The extreme summer of 2018: Norwegian weather
news and the politics of weatherlore 71
KYRRE KVERNDOKK
6 The prophetic tone in True Detective: sensing the time
of the future climate disaster 89
ISAK WINKEL HOLM
7 Advocating equilibrium: on climate change at public
aquariums 106
LARS KAIJSER
PART 3
Cultural histories of climate change temporality 123
8 The sixth extinction: naming time in a new way 125
MARIT RUGE BJÆRKE
9 Smoke, smells, and seaweeds in eighteenth-century
Norway 141
ANNE ERIKSEN
10 Origin myths from the cultural historical archive
of the Anthropocene: Vico, Burnet and the time of the
deluge 158
JOHN ØDEMARK
PART 4
Conclusion 177
11 Living the climate change 179
MARIT RUGE BJÆRKE
Index 185
Contributors
Marit Ruge Bjærke is a postdoctoral research fellow in Cultural Studies at
the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion,
University of Bergen, Norway. Bjærke holds a PhD in Marine Biology
and an MA in History of Ideas. Her research interests lie within the envi-
ronmental humanities, with a focus on biodiversity, biodiversity loss, and
invasive species.
Anne Eriksen is Professor of Cultural History at the Department of Cul-
ture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. Her
research interests include collective memory and folklore, cultural herit-
age, the history of knowledge, and eighteenth-century historiography and
medical history.
Diane E. Goldstein is Professor of Folklore Studies at the Department of
Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, USA. Her research
interests are vernacular narrative, belief studies, and ethnography of speak-
ing as well as the folklore of violence, trauma, and illness.
Isak Winkel Holm is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Depart-
ment of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. His in-
terests are literary theory, philosophical aesthetics, political theory, and
disaster research. He is currently working on a monograph on Søren Kier-
kegaard and the ongoing ecological catastrophe.
Camilla Asplund Ingemark is a research fellow (Researcher II) at the
Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion at
the University of Bergen, Norway, for 2017–2020. She is also Senior Lec-
turer in Ethnology at Uppsala University, Campus Gotland, Sweden, and
Docent in Folkloristics at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Her research
interests include climate change temporalities, vernacular conceptions of
history, the cultural history of disasters, folk narrative from antiquity to
the present, and the history of emotions.
Lars Kaijser is Professor of Ethnology at the Department for Ethnology, His-
tory of Religion, and Gender Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden.
viii Contributors
His research interests are popular music heritage, guided tours, and the
intersection of nature/culture.
Kyrre Kverndokk is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of
Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion at the University of
Bergen, Norway. His research interests are the history of folklore studies,
the cultural history of natural disasters, climate change temporalities, and
the practice and politics of Second World War memory.
Lone Ree Milkær is a PhD student at the Department of Archaeology,
History, Cultural Studies, and Religion at the University of Bergen,
Norway. Her research interests are climate change discourse, everyday
climate activism, traditionalisation, and environmental humanities.
John Ødemark is Professor of Cultural History and Cultural Encounters at
the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the Univer-
sity of Oslo, Norway. His research interests are the history of the human-
ities and cultural translation.
Illustrations
3.1 Facsimile from Sustainable Lives Magazine 42
4.1 Figure showing the temporalities present in NEG response
0263/00010. Woman b. 1970 57
4.2 Figure showing the temporalities present in SLS response
2303. Man, uncertain age 61
