Thanks for posing this important question. It is an urgent topic for field based social scientists to engage. As an anthropologist working on climate adaptation, I would agree that anthropology and human geography have been relatively marginal in the field, but I see that as an opportunity for us to step into the gap, an opportunity which more and more of us are jumping at. I totally agree that there needs to be more work on the lived processes of autonomous adapation to counter balance the current over emphasis on modeling and planning. In my own work (see my RG page), I have tried to articulate the some of the methodological and theoretical foundations for an anthropological approach to adaptation.

There is a good book on anthropology and climate change which can serve as a good starting point. Along with Carla Roncoli and Ben Orlove, I co-authored a chapter on anthropological method and epistemology relating the CC research. If you would like a copy of our chapter, please feel free to contact me directly.

http://books.google.nl/books?id=VpUgAQAAIAAJ&q=anthropology+climate+change&dq=anthropology+climate+change&hl=en&sa=X&ei=17JvUaLhBOeR0QWz1oDwCA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA

I would recommend looking up other work by Ben and Carla (http://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=6ru1OMEAAAAJ&hl=en), both of whom have been leaders in the field.

Specifically regarding oral history and local knowledge, there is fair bit of good research going in the arctic areas. Julie Cruikshank's book "Do glaciers listen?" should be of interest to you.

http://books.google.nl/books/about/Do_Glaciers_Listen.html?id=Nt5OumYWApQC&redir_esc=y

In the arctic regions of Canada, there is quite some work being done on the co-production of knowledge between Inuit and research scientists. See references below.

Berkes, F. and D. Jolly. 2001. Adapting to climate change: social-ecological resilience in a Canadian western Arctic community. Conservation Ecology 5:18.

Cruikshank, J. 2001. Glaciers and Climate Change: Perspectives from Oral Tradition. Arctic 54:377-393.

Dowsley, M. 2009. Community clusters in wildlife and environmental management: using TEK and community involvement to improve co-management in an era of rapid environmental change. Polar Research 28:43-59.

Ford, J.; T. Pearce; B. Smit; J. Wandel; M. Allurut; K. Shappa; H. Ittusujurat; and K. Qrunnut. 2007. Reducing vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic: the case of Nunavut, Canada. Arctic 60:150-166.

Gearheard, S.; M. Pocernich; R. Stewart; J. Sanguya; and H. Huntington. 2010. Linking Inuit knowledge and meteorological station observations to understand changing wind patterns at Clyde River, Nunavut. Climatic Change 100:267-294.

Herman-Mercer, N.; P.F. Schuster; and K.B. Maracle. 2011. Indigenous Observations of Climate Change in the Lower Yukon River Basin, Alaska. Human Organization 70:244-252.

Huntington, H.; T. Callaghan; S. Fox; and I. Krupnik. 2004. Matching Traditional and Scientific Observations to Detect Environmental Change: A Discussion on Arctic Terrestrial Ecosystems. Ambio:18-23.

Huntington, H.P. 2005. "We Dance Around in a Ring and Suppose": Academic Engagement with Traditional Knowledge. Arctic Anthro. 42:29-32.

Laidler, G. 2006. Inuit and Scientific Perspectives on the Relationship Between Sea Ice and Climate Change: The Ideal Complement? Climatic Change 78:407-444.

Matthews, R. and R. Sydneysmith. 2010. Adaptive Capacity as a Dynamic Institutional Process: Conceptual Perspectives and Their Application. In Adaptive Capacity and Environmental Governance, ed. D. Armitage and R. Plummer, 223-242. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer

Nichols, T.; F. Berkes; D. Jolly; N.B. Snow; and N. Sachs Harbour. 2004. Climate change and sea ice: Local observations from the Canadian Western Arctic. Arctic 57:68-79.

Pearce, T.D.; J.D. Ford; G.J. Laidler; B. Smit; F. Duerden; M. Allarut; M. Andrachuk; S. Baryluk; A. Dialla; P. Elee; A. Goose; T. Ikummaq; E. Joamie; F. Kataoyak; E. Loring; S. Meakin; S. Nickels; K. Shappa; J. Shirley; and J. Wandel. 2009. Community collaboration and climate change research in the Canadian Arctic. Polar Research 28:10-27.

Pennesi, K.; J. Arokium; and G. McBean. in press. Integrating local and scientific weather knowledge as a strategy for adaptation to climate change in the Arctic. Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change:1-26.

Sakakibara, C. 2011. Climate Change and Cultural Survival in the Arctic: People of the Whales and Muktuk Politics. Weather, Climate, and Society 3:76-89.

Smith, H.A. and K. Sharp. 2012. Indigenous climate knowledges. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3:467-476.

Thornton, T.F. and N. Manasfi. 2010. AdaptationGenuine and Spurious: Demystifying Adaptation Processes in Relation to Climate Change. Environment and Society: Advances in Research 1:132-155.

Wenzel, G.W. 2009. Canadian Inuit subsistence and ecological instability— if the climate changes, must the Inuit? Polar Research 28:89-99.

Perhaps look into/ontact Patty LImerick. She is the founder of the Center of the American West and might do things up your alley.

There have been publications in which the likely outcomes of future autonomous adaptation is explored using "agent-based models". The idea is that complex individual behaviors generate emergent behavior in their aggregate. Individual agents have a range of possible adaptive behaviors. To characterize likely future behaviors, interviews are sometimes used.

If this interests you, let me know and I will dig out a couple of publications that I've run into in the past. If I remember correctly, these were studies in the U.S. and one large project in Southeast Asia.

P.S. I used the term "autonomous" adaptation, to distinguish it from planned adaptation. Autonomous means that it results from decisions made by individual agents. Planned means regulatory or policy.

I am an anthropologist, have a couple of papers here on RG about communities near glaciers. You could check them out.

Hi again Fabio.

You voted my previous answer up, so I assumed the topic might be of interest to you.I found one of the papers I ran into. Undoubtedly there are more out there. This is work in Vietnam.

Castella JC, Tran Ngoc Trung, Boissau S (2005) Participatory simulation og land-use changes in the northern mountains of Vietnam: the combined use of an agent-based model, a role-playing game, and a geographic information system. Ecology and Society 10 (1): 27.

Freely downloadable from: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/include/getdoc.php?articleid=1328&type=ES-2005-1328.pdf

And this is a paper which did not use interviews, but recommended them for future work:

Tze Ling Ng, Eheart JW, Cai X, Braden JB (2011) An agent-based model of farmer decision-making and water quality impacts at the watershed scale under markets for carbon allowances and a second-generation biofuel crop. Water Resources Research 47: W09519. doi :10.1029/2011WR010399

,

Hi Mariza... Is your dichotomy autonomous and planned adaptation based on literature? if so, can you give some articles on these adaptation types?

Dante,

Yes, it's based on literature. I've seen these terms ("autonomous" (or "spontaneous") and "planned" adaptation) used often with respect to agricultural adaptation. It's hard to remember where I've seen it - probably papers by Easterling.

I googled the term just now and found this 2010 literature review (though I cannot tell how good the review is): http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/adaptation/docs/Autonomous%20Adaptation%20Lit%20Review%2021%20Aug%202010.pdf

Easterling introduced some interesting concepts, such as the "tools" of agricultural adaptation: 1) changing use of natural resources, 2) technological innovation, 3) human ingenuity, and 4) information and knowledge.

The last one, information and knowledge, is probably of interest to cultural anthropologists. In particular, what sort of information on climate change and the adaptive capacity of different crops or practices will farmers understand best, and trust most? Answering that probably requires studying issues of effective communication of science with "usable" variables (this term is also from literature), issues of trust, and issues of whether direct experience of weather and crop yields in successive years can lead to perception of climatic changes by farmers.

I am currently preparing a proposal for an "integrated study" for a watershed in the Pacific Northwest, and am hoping I can find an anthropologist or social scientist interested in these sort of topics and who has knowledge of this geographical region. If you know someone with such specific interests, please let me know. Thank you.

Hallo Maritza, hallo to everyone, thank you for the posts, each one bring an useful information.

Maritza, I am sorry, but since 3 days I am without internet connection, i writed an answer to your first post from my mobile, but today I discover that only the vote was registered.

Anyway, I in my disappeared post I write that despite my question that wasn’t completely clear, the agent based models you suggest is an interesting point of view, and a I find the dichotomy Planned Vs. Autonomous change useful. (first thought: there will be some kind of 'resistance' or inertia to the planned change, and each local reality should be collocated in a intermediate point between the two extreme).

The link at the participatory simulation you posted is interesting, because the experience mix data form ‘real people’. Some of the methodologies are similar to the ones we used in Chile for participatory mapping of natural and cultural resources in some Mapuche communities (unfortunately all the documentation is an Italian and something in Spanish).

I have the feeling, but maybe I'm wrong, that social sciences have a marginal place in research related to climate change adaptation an mitigation.

The processes requiring adaptation involve complex transformation social structures and human behaviour. Even the simple acceptance of the fact that ‘climate change is now’, and that it is necessary to initiate adaptation strategies to limit the impact of change isn't something easy to accept.

I have the feeling, but maybe I'm wrong, that social sciences have a marginal place in research related to climate change adaptation an mitigation.

The processes requiring adaptation involve complex transformation social structures and human behaviour. Even the simple acceptance of the fact that ‘climate change is now’ and that it is necessary to initiate adaptation strategies to limit the impact of change, isn't something easy to accept.

I am thinking how social science, specifically cultural and social anthropology, can help in this.

for example:

- Cultural resources and actual knowledge that are transmitted orally, but this 'know-how' is not systematized and may be useful (in part we can found it in internet blog and forum)

-Cultural resources and traditional knowledge from oral history may be useful (eg farming or cultivation strategies used by small farmers to mitigate the effects of the seasons particularly dry / rainy.)

-changes in climate produce great social transformations. I.E. example the effects of Middle Ages micro-glaciation over the Roman Empire.

- Studies on Prejudice, belief structures and common practices that inhibit the adoption of effective strategies for climate changes adaptation and mitigation.

There are lot of publications and studies about ‘indigenous knowledge’.

Is quite common to think that indigenous Traditional knowledge is based on a different cosmic vision, and in ‘developed world’ the popular knowledge and conventional science (the academic knowledge) are more or less the same. I think that will be interesting to work too on the local modern and traditional knowledges of developed countries.

Ben, I am reading some of your articles. I like the approach to 'indigenous' of the "Comparing Knowledge of an experience with climate change across three glacied mountain regions ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235701795_Comparing_knowledge_of_and_experience_with_climate_change_across_three_glaciated_mountain_regions?ev=prf_pub )

Chapter Comparing knowledge of and experience with climate change ac...

Ciao Fabio,

I am very interested in the topics you raise, in particular the traditional knowledge and culture in the developed world. I think you are right that the social sciences have had a marginal role in climate change adaptation and mitigation studies, which have been dominated by natural sciences approaches. (By the way, I am a hydrologist.) There is however some recognition that we are part of our watershed and integral components of ecosystems, rather than outside observers in a Newtonian model of science. I quickly looked up your publications and noticed that you have looked at the researcher as a communicator which interferes with the "subject matter" of the study.

In the U.S., the National Science Foundation (NSF) has in the last few years been awarding grants to "integrated studies" on the topic of climate change and sustainability.

I'm part of a team who will be submitting a proposal this year (for a project in the Pacific Northwest), and we are exploring the inclusion of an anthropologist like yourself. However, I presume you cannot work in the U.S. (correct?)

Best,

Mariza

There have been many studies in India about this. Can give references from popular media.

Hallo, Maritza,

You have an illuminated point of view, sometimes is not easy to communicate with researchers in 'hard sciences'. Sometimes they forget that are human and some processes they study involve humans, so may be the point of view of social science can help.

In general I think actual knowledge is one of the basis for the behaviour, the resistance to 'planned' adaptation and limit the possible paths of 'spontaneous' adaptation. From this point of view We can say that 'culture is a shared way to describe reality, represent problems and find solutions'. I will not pretend to 'forge' an universal statement, but only an instrument to represent one aspect of what culture is.

About the effects of researcher activity, is another theme that take my attention. The article “The 'side' effect of on going evaluation: the researcher like communicator” (Effetti "collaterali" del Monitoraggio: il ricercatore come comunicatore) was written after an on going evaluation, is focused on the effects of the research on the people involved and how the researcher that can be a medium for communicate informations from one organization to other and be an actor to build and strength network (but I considered a specific situation of evaluation).

Other point of view is in the Thesis chapter The dark side of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle p.100. ( Tecnologie Digitali e Ricerca Etnoantropologica) where digging in the memory of some semester in Nuclear Engineering, I tried to move the focus from the normal assumption of Heisenberg principle 'is the researcher that change the object with his research' (that’s real in social sciences) to the differences between quantum mechanics and traditional physics and 'sometimes the problem is not on the data but in the theory we use to observe and to explain'.

I am really pleased you find my profile interesting. In fact, to date, I have never actually considered the possibility of doing research in the US, so I have no idea if there may be some bureaucracy problems. Personally I have no prejudice in work abroad :-)

Dear colleagues

I am an anthropologist and a sociologist. I am pleased to offer you my very new version of my Free online training In French, English and Spanish:

Qualitative survey methods applied to the management of natural resources

https://enquetes-cirad.iamm.fr/

(Yes that is free because I work for a public institution dedicated to rural development)

This training aims to provide method to carry out qualitative surveys using semi-structured interviews:

Constructing the problem statement, Choosing the survey method, Conducting a semi-structured interview, Processing, analyzing and interpreting data

The training consists of four modules that can be followed in the logical order of the investigation process, but each module has been designed to be autonomous:

A. Constructing the problem statement

B. Choosing the survey method and preparing the semi-structured interview

C. Conducting a semi-structured interview

D. Processing, analyzing and interpreting data

I hope it will help you to strengthen your skills and your students' ones on collecting and processing qualitative data on local knowledge, stakeholder's perceptions, farmers' strategies, innovation process and more. You can also use material to help you to give your own courses.

You will travel through study cases to Mali, Madagascar, France, Indonesia...

Enjoy it.

Nicole Sibelet

Hallo Nicole,

really an interesting project. I had not time yet to read in deep the documents and see the videos, but for what I can see is a really good example of teaching platform with a lot of document and informations. I will recommend.

Hi Fabio

This project was like a dream. I met a very creative and efficient multimedia team and we did it. I have very good feedbacks from researchers, students and teachers using it. And we are always happy when we have suggestions to improve it. Next step we want to elaborate bibliographies in english and in spanish because we didn't have time to achieve it. So if you have ideas related to the topics we deal with, please mention them to me. Bye

Fabio,

Today a friend told me to look for the key words "participatory modeling". Found for example the following web page:

http://learningforsustainability.net/social_learning/participatory_modelling.php

I hope it includes something of interest to you.

Mariza

Hallo, Maritza i think this article if usefull for who is working on water but too for everybody.

I finish reading this article of Ben Orlowe ( https://www.researchgate.net/profile/B_Orlove/ - see article link below) about water. I'd liked the approach of water like 'total social fact' that is a concept from Marcel Mauss, one of the founders of modern anthropology. Too often people forget the root of the disciplines keeping only the 'yesterday' forgetting that we are a product of centuries of thinking.

I an taking ideas form the article to for other social material object (i.e. in a proyect about agricultural and urban organic waste and micro-composting processes) but we can apply even to non material cultural objects.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228173371_Water_Sustainability_Anthropological_Approaches_and_Prospects?ev=prf_pub

Article Water Sustainability: Anthropological Approaches and Prospects

Thanks for posing this important question. It is an urgent topic for field based social scientists to engage. As an anthropologist working on climate adaptation, I would agree that anthropology and human geography have been relatively marginal in the field, but I see that as an opportunity for us to step into the gap, an opportunity which more and more of us are jumping at. I totally agree that there needs to be more work on the lived processes of autonomous adapation to counter balance the current over emphasis on modeling and planning. In my own work (see my RG page), I have tried to articulate the some of the methodological and theoretical foundations for an anthropological approach to adaptation.

There is a good book on anthropology and climate change which can serve as a good starting point. Along with Carla Roncoli and Ben Orlove, I co-authored a chapter on anthropological method and epistemology relating the CC research. If you would like a copy of our chapter, please feel free to contact me directly.

http://books.google.nl/books?id=VpUgAQAAIAAJ&q=anthropology+climate+change&dq=anthropology+climate+change&hl=en&sa=X&ei=17JvUaLhBOeR0QWz1oDwCA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA

I would recommend looking up other work by Ben and Carla (http://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=6ru1OMEAAAAJ&hl=en), both of whom have been leaders in the field.

Specifically regarding oral history and local knowledge, there is fair bit of good research going in the arctic areas. Julie Cruikshank's book "Do glaciers listen?" should be of interest to you.

http://books.google.nl/books/about/Do_Glaciers_Listen.html?id=Nt5OumYWApQC&redir_esc=y

In the arctic regions of Canada, there is quite some work being done on the co-production of knowledge between Inuit and research scientists. See references below.

Berkes, F. and D. Jolly. 2001. Adapting to climate change: social-ecological resilience in a Canadian western Arctic community. Conservation Ecology 5:18.

Cruikshank, J. 2001. Glaciers and Climate Change: Perspectives from Oral Tradition. Arctic 54:377-393.

Dowsley, M. 2009. Community clusters in wildlife and environmental management: using TEK and community involvement to improve co-management in an era of rapid environmental change. Polar Research 28:43-59.

Ford, J.; T. Pearce; B. Smit; J. Wandel; M. Allurut; K. Shappa; H. Ittusujurat; and K. Qrunnut. 2007. Reducing vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic: the case of Nunavut, Canada. Arctic 60:150-166.

Gearheard, S.; M. Pocernich; R. Stewart; J. Sanguya; and H. Huntington. 2010. Linking Inuit knowledge and meteorological station observations to understand changing wind patterns at Clyde River, Nunavut. Climatic Change 100:267-294.

Herman-Mercer, N.; P.F. Schuster; and K.B. Maracle. 2011. Indigenous Observations of Climate Change in the Lower Yukon River Basin, Alaska. Human Organization 70:244-252.

Huntington, H.; T. Callaghan; S. Fox; and I. Krupnik. 2004. Matching Traditional and Scientific Observations to Detect Environmental Change: A Discussion on Arctic Terrestrial Ecosystems. Ambio:18-23.

Huntington, H.P. 2005. "We Dance Around in a Ring and Suppose": Academic Engagement with Traditional Knowledge. Arctic Anthro. 42:29-32.

Laidler, G. 2006. Inuit and Scientific Perspectives on the Relationship Between Sea Ice and Climate Change: The Ideal Complement? Climatic Change 78:407-444.

Matthews, R. and R. Sydneysmith. 2010. Adaptive Capacity as a Dynamic Institutional Process: Conceptual Perspectives and Their Application. In Adaptive Capacity and Environmental Governance, ed. D. Armitage and R. Plummer, 223-242. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer

Nichols, T.; F. Berkes; D. Jolly; N.B. Snow; and N. Sachs Harbour. 2004. Climate change and sea ice: Local observations from the Canadian Western Arctic. Arctic 57:68-79.

Pearce, T.D.; J.D. Ford; G.J. Laidler; B. Smit; F. Duerden; M. Allarut; M. Andrachuk; S. Baryluk; A. Dialla; P. Elee; A. Goose; T. Ikummaq; E. Joamie; F. Kataoyak; E. Loring; S. Meakin; S. Nickels; K. Shappa; J. Shirley; and J. Wandel. 2009. Community collaboration and climate change research in the Canadian Arctic. Polar Research 28:10-27.

Pennesi, K.; J. Arokium; and G. McBean. in press. Integrating local and scientific weather knowledge as a strategy for adaptation to climate change in the Arctic. Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change:1-26.

Sakakibara, C. 2011. Climate Change and Cultural Survival in the Arctic: People of the Whales and Muktuk Politics. Weather, Climate, and Society 3:76-89.

Smith, H.A. and K. Sharp. 2012. Indigenous climate knowledges. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3:467-476.

Thornton, T.F. and N. Manasfi. 2010. AdaptationGenuine and Spurious: Demystifying Adaptation Processes in Relation to Climate Change. Environment and Society: Advances in Research 1:132-155.

Wenzel, G.W. 2009. Canadian Inuit subsistence and ecological instability— if the climate changes, must the Inuit? Polar Research 28:89-99.

Thank You Todd, your contribution was really usefull and rich with citation and related people. Your page is definitly very interesting, like the Carla's one.

Kenneth, thanks to explicit reference to memory of exceptional events, oral account and oral traditions.

The individual perception of 'exceptional' can be incorporated in oral traditions (the 'repository' of memory) and transmitted for a very long time.

It seems that in the answers at my question we step in three types of oral account:

- the description of the 'here and now' representation of the perceived reality,

- the memory of living persons and the lived past

- the 'social' memory incorporated in transmitted oral accounts, myths and legends.

Dear colleagues

Thanks for your excellent contributions

I have a point linked with the subject we here deal with in terms of ethics and epistemology.

I do think that quality of any work depend on ethics especially in job where you have beneficiaries. Epistemology as well is very important in research to have a reflexivity on what we do.

I am really amazed to see that students (and even most of colleagues), whatever their nationalities are, lack even notions of epistemology and ethics. So in my (physical) courses on social science methods I have classes on these issues. I started introduce some elements on that in my distance learning : https://enquetes-cirad.iamm.fr/course/view.php?id=3

A) In the MODULE 1 / CONSTRUCTING THE PROBLEM STATEMENT

LESSON 1 Epistemology and concepts

Basic knowledge of epistemology for the social sciences (see file attached below)

Also

B) in the MODULE 3 : CONDUCTING A SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW

All along this module in a concrete way and especially

in the LESSON 2. Heart of the interview/ in the video resources and exercise [11']

where you will see interviewers on action and then debriefing with a teacher their own attitudes considering what following:

Attitudes during an interview : According to Porter (1950), there are five common attitudes. Only the fifth enables an interview to be conducted in such a way that the interviewee

can express him or herself fully

"1. Evaluation

2. Interpretation

3. Advice/help

4. Inquisition

5. Empathy, understanding"

I want to strengthen this distant learning on issues concerning Epistemology and Ethics and new lessons next year.

I will refer to major french authors (like Bachelard and Piaget).

Could you advise me some of your favorites on Epistemology and Ethics that students would like to read ?

Could you suggest me lively way to do it ?

In conclusion please consider that ehtics and epistemology have to be worked more in the world to have good quality of Research especially when you collect data through interviews.

Regards, Nicole

Biblio

Bachelard G, 1983 (1ère édition : 1938). La formation de l’esprit scientifique. Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques. Paris, France: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin.

Porter EH, 1950. An introduction of Therapeutic Counseling Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Sibelet N, Mutel M, Arragon P, Luye M, 2013. Qualitative survey methods applied to natural resource management. Online learning modules. Available at: http://enquetes-cirad.iamm.fr/.

Hy Nicole,

you rise a central problem in qualitative interviewing and participant observation: how we know? How we produce the data for the interpretation?

There are a huge amount of written discussion since last 2.000 / 2.500 year.

I like the approach of Nadel (S. Nadel, 1951, The foundation of social anthropology). He try to extend the use of the concept of 'personal equation' from Astronomy and 'hard' sciences, where is possible to measure the difference between two measurements, to social sciences, where things are a bit more complex.

Is an interesting approach, he suggest that psychotherapy could help the researcher to a better knowledge about himself, and this will improve his observations.

On the other side, leaving aside the 'deep of mind'. Since I started to use software’s for qualitative content analysis (i.e. Transana), I noticed a lot of other subtle conscious or unconscious manipulation from the researchers.

Sometimes the interviewer engage some like a ‘oral fight’ with the informant. Otherwise can ‘suggest the answer’ or the ‘preferred’ one.

At other level we can have error of interpretation or transcription (i.e. the effect of what i like to call 'hypnotic effect of transcription' , where after a some time transcribing, our thought can start to 'going in their own way', and sometimes the transcriber start to write down synonyms of the words he ear in the recording.)

If the analysis is done only on the transcription, without a software that can connect transcription with audio / video recording, a lot of errors may remain hidden.

But I think that is possible to help researchers to learn about their errors. Group work and cross analysis can mitigate the errors.

Logically not all the times is possible, but when is possible, why not?

I am a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer, so I think that participant observation, informal dialogues and different type of interviewing are a good (well en reality I think the best :-) methods for uncover representations and have some answers.

But they are not the only methods, and there is a need to a deep training and clear vision of the inter subjective dynamics.

Thank you so much. That is interesting to have another point of view. I hope other colleagues will have other comments. I am re-reading Feyerabend and try to read soon Nadal as you advice Cheers

Not directly related to this question, but somewhat related in that it advocates for greater involvement of anthropology in climate change arenas, is the recent publication reported on here:

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/53993