Thinking Like a Climate

Hannah Knox is Associate Professor of Anthropology at University College London, coauthor of Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise, and coeditor of Ethnography for a Data-Saturated World and Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion.

“What makes climate change mitigation so challenging, even for activists and municipal officials committed to the project? Working with planners, experts, and citizens seeking to redress the most pernicious impacts of climate change in Manchester, Hannah Knox has produced the most stunning and thought-provoking ethnographic account of climate change that I have read. She urges us to consider climate change as a ‘form of thought’-a pattern produced when spreadsheets, green moralities, technologies, and modes of calculation interact. These interactions, she argues, not only remake what climate means, or what counts as climate action: they demand nothing less than a revolutionary transformation of our understandings of humanity and responsibility in the contemporary moment.” - Nikhil Anand, author of (Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai) “We know that industrial activity is altering our planet's atmosphere, and that we need to act fast to mitigate it. But what should we do, exactly? Through her careful and inventive exploration of climate change activism in Manchester, anthropologist Hannah Knox provides pathways to answering this vital yet difficult question. Her stellar ethnography demonstrates that we will learn how to ‘think like a climate,’ building connections rather than boundaries.” - Gökçe Günel, author of (Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi) “In this innovative ethnographic study, Hannah Knox takes the reader on a journey through the city of Manchester, UK, telling the story of climate change through the lives of those who model, govern, and enact it.... Researchers interested in environmental politics...will find great value in reading this book.” - Danial H. Naqvi (Environmental Politics) “Thinking Like a Climate has a sense of urgency.... The book shows the vitality of new anthropological and geographical analyses of climate action in practice and their creativity in a collective effort to take seriously the material conditions of climate action.” - Vanesa Castán Broto (AAG Review of Books) “One of the most important contributions of [Thinking Like a Climate] is Knox’s position as an engaged researcher who is implicated in Manchester’s contextually specific climate dynamics. . . . Knox argues that addressing the climate crisis requires a fundamental recalibration of how we think about and act upon the world."- Andrew Karvonen (LSE Review of Books) “Thinking Like A Climate convincingly demonstrates why an anthropologi­cal approach is essential to the study of climate change. Methodologically, Knox has produced a compelling case that to understand climate change as a material-discursive phenomenon, the methods of ethnography are not only useful but crucial.”- Sydney Giacalone (Anthropological Quarterly)

• Abbreviations  ixPreface and Acknowledgments  xiIntroduction. Matter, Politics, and Climate Change  1Part I. Contact ZonesClimate Change in Manchester: An Origin Story  351. 41% and the Problem of Proportion  40How the Climate Takes Shape  632. The Carbon Life of Buildings  67Footprints and Traces, or Learning to Think Like a Climate  893. Footprints, Objects, and the Endlessness of Relations  95When Global Climate Meets Local Nature(s)  1224. An Irrelevant Apocalypse: Futures, Models, and Scenarios  127Cities, Mayors, and Climate Change  1565. Stuck in Strategies  159Part II. Rematerializing Politics6. Test Houses and Vernacular Engineers  1797. Activist Devices and the Art of Politics  2058. Symptoms, Diagnoses, and the Politics of the Hack  234Conclusion. "Going Native" in the Anthropocene  259Notes  273References  285Index  305