Predictions as Lies in Ceará, Brazil: The Intersection of Two Cultural Models (original) (raw)
Related papers
Making Forecasts Meaningful: Explanations of Problematic Predictions in Northeast Brazil
Weather, Climate and Society, 2011
This study illustrates the need to consider the multiple interpretations and experiences that influence how climate forecasts are evaluated in local contexts when assessing how useful forecasts can be for increasing the resilience of rural communities. Video clips of predictions made by scientific and traditional forecasters were shown in interviews and focus groups to elicit explanations for why the predictions are sometimes judged to be inaccurate, not useful, or inappropriately communicated by different sectors of the rural population in Ceará , Northeast Brazil. Results indicate that climate forecasts are not simply a decision-making tool that provides information in a one-way transfer from forecaster to user. The meanings and values of predictions are jointly created by both forecasters and their audiences. Predictions and the discussions that surround them are also an important part of expressing social identities and ideas about how the world works. Ineffective predictions are explained here in terms of religious beliefs, environmental change, forecaster identity, interactional context, and cultural practices.
The Politics of Uncertainty and the Fate of Forecasters
Using ethnographic data from rural Northeast Brazil, this article explores, firstly, how climate uncertainties are interconnected to processes of accountability and blame, and, secondly, how this connection affects the activity of climate forecasting. By framing climate events in ways that downplay the inherent uncertainties of the atmosphere, political discourses on various scales, as well as religious narratives, create a propitious context for the enactment of what I call accountability rituals. Forecasters seem to attract to themselves a great deal of the collective anxieties related to climate, and are very often blamed for the negative impact of climate events. This blaming may take place in a variety of ways, and has a range of practical results: from real physical violence to attacks on the authority and legitimacy of forecasters, by way of ridicule and jokes. I conclude by suggesting that, on the one hand, the study of the social uses of climate-related uncertainties offers special opportunities for understanding how human societies deal with uncertainty and blame; and that, on the other hand, a better understanding of these issues is necessary to improve relations between climate forecasting and the societies where it takes place – the latter being a key issue in the processes of understanding and adapting to climate change.
Sustainable Agriculture Research
Using seasonal climate forecasts based on indigenous knowledge is common among West African farmers’ strategies to make farming decisions and reduce climate risk on rainfed season productions. Farmers use endogenous climate forecasts to guide their decision-making in choosing farm plots, crop varieties, and sowing dates. The main categories of indicators of endogenous seasonal climate forecasts are environmental, biological, magic, and religious sources which are transmitted from one generation to another by oral tradition. This mode of transmission leads to biases in the endogenous climate forecasts. On the other hand, scientific climate information is also one way to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on agricultural productivity. It focuses on starting and ending dates of the rainy season, length of the rainy season, number of rainy days, annual cumulative rainfall, and average and maximum duration of dry spells. However, scientific predictions often diverge from the ...
Cognition, caution, and credibility: the risks of climate forecast application
Risk, Decision and Policy, 2004
Weather and climate forecasters are now in the business of communicating seasonal climate forecasts to decision-makers. While it seems clear that these forecasts carry a great many potential benefits, it also appears possible that conveying too much information about the forecasts could have the potential to harm people. Based on theories from behavioral economics, we argue that many people are likely to overestimate the potential dangers of forecasts, and to err on the side of communicating too little information. We support this argument with evidence gathered over the last three years in Zimbabwe, in a project designed to help subsistence farmers understand and use seasonal rainfall forecasts.
Social interpretations on climate change in the Northeast of Brazil
Latin American J. of Management for Sustainable Development, 2018
This paper proposes a critical discussion about social interpretations on climate change. The result of research on a doctoral thesis, aiming to discuss how social agents in the northeast of Brazil have interpreted climate change, and to outline current relevant policies. The methodology includes the analysis, review of bibliographic and the dialectical method was used as the guiding general methodology. Through field research and qualitative analysis of interviews with 59 key social agents. Data analysis was performed using the software MAXQDA 12. The results of the article are: the references show there is a trend for global warming to continue until the end of the 21st century, noticing this the social agents interviewed presented to us an overall concern about theme as a real phenomenon and the data shows a social reading of climate change that confirm the scope of its consequences and the need to address the problems that arise.
Anthropology and the Pragmatics of Climate Knowledge in Brazil
American Anthropologist, 2020
Drawing on my own ethnographic research with meteorologists and hydrologists in the northeastern regions of Brazil and the ideas of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa from his book The Falling Sky (Kopenawa and Albert 2013), I suggest that mainstream climate sciences will fail to benefit from Indigenous knowledge about climate change if the dominant language ideologies of mainstream science continue to silence and disarticulate it. Here I specifically evoke some of Kopenawa’s ideas to discuss how the referential language ideology of science ignores and erases the performative work of key actors in environmental preservation and management.
Science, Knowledge and Belief. On Local Understandings of Weather and Climate Change in Amazonia
This article explores different modes of understanding such atmospheric phenomena that in English are described as 'weather' and 'climate' applying Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis. In consequence, focus is not on the physical phenomena as such but on ontological differences as reflected in expressions and practices pertaining to indigenous Matsigenka people and migrants from the Andean highlands to the tropical lowlands, centring on their respective interaction both with each other and, more generally, with the social, natural and supernatural dimensions of the environment. Adhering to ideals of modernity and modern science, the Andean migrants employ the climate change discourse as an indication upon social advancement to promote and legitimize their superiority over the allegedly backward and irrational Matsigenka to whom the climate discourse makes little sense. The climate change discourse thus serves here as a means of environmental colonialism in order to turn Matsigenka people into proper citizens.
Reading the Rains: Local Knowledge and Rainfall Forecasting in Burkina Faso
Society & Natural Resources, 2002
This article describes how farmers of Burkina Faso predict seasonal rainfall and examines how their forecasts relate to those produced by meteorological science. Farmers' forecasting knowledge encompasses shared and selective repertoires. Most farmers formulate expectations from observation of natural phenomena. Cultural and ritual spiritualists also predict rainfall from divination, visions, and dreams. Rather than positing local and scienti®c knowledge as self-exclusive, our research shows that farmers operate in multiple cognitive frameworks. Moreover, they are interested in receiving scienti®c information because they perceive local forecasts as becoming less reliable as a result of increasing climate variability. Some aspects of local forecasting knowledge, such as those stressing the relationship between temperatures, wind, and rainfall, can help explain meteorology-based forecasts. But signi®cant discordance remains between scienti®c and local forecasts. The former predict total rainfall quantity at a regional scale, whereas the latter stress rainfall duration and distribution and are more attuned to crop±weather interactions. Local systems of thought stress the relationship between knowledge and social responsibility. This emphasizes the need for scientists to integrate information dissemination projects with efforts to improve farmers' capacity to respond to forecasts and to cope with suboptimal climate impacts.