Climate change and household dynamics: beyond consumption, unbounding sustainability

摘要

Scientists increasingly realise that now methodologies for modelling climate change have been refined, what is needed is geographically sensitive research on its social and cultural dimensions (Hulme 2008). As a recent editorial in Science acknowledged, 'Natural sciences should no longer dictate the Earth system research agenda; social sciences will be at least as important in its next phase' (Reid et al. 2009, 245). In this essay, we seek to seize this moment of interdisciplinary convergence by raising fresh questions about much-needed research on the social and cultural geographical dimensions of climate change. Specifically, we ask whether key conceptual boundaries - often too comfortably framed around 'sustainability' and 'consumption' - require dismantling, and what might be necessary to move beyond them.