Culture, Space and Climate Change

Climate change is understood and acted upon in many different, locally specific ways. How can these differences be explained? What are their implications for spatial planning? This book suggests a relational and multidimensional approach to culture and space and provides a fascinating account of different climate cultures in European coastal communities. -- Anita Engels, Director, Centre for Globalisation and Governance, CGG, University of Hamburg, Germany Climate change from a cultural perspective is an important contribution to both enhancing our understanding of the drivers and causes of climate change as well as our motivation to design better policies to deal with climate change in a politically and culturally sensitive way. Both the case study and the theoretical analysis in Heimann's book serve these two goals in an exemplary manner. Competent, engaged and evidence-informed, this book is a must-read for any climate change expert or activist. -- Ortwin Renn, Director, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, IASS, Potsdam, Germany Besides presenting the results of an innovative study of public and private sector actors in several European countries, Heimann's book brings a constructionist theoretical framework to climate change research that substantially deepens our understanding of the impact of cultural and spatial factors. Thereby taking a vital step in the difficult process of finding and implementing solutions. -- Margarethe Kusenbach, University of South Florida, USA This innovative work gives an accurate place to social and cultural factors involved in climate change policies and the implementation of policy measures. Beyond the case study of European coastal regions, Culture, Space and Climate Change provides a well-grounded, comprehensive model that will undoubtedly be valuable in explaining differences in climate change perceptions and climate change adaptation practices in other social realities and cultural spaces such as in Latin America and other regions of the world. An important and rich contribution to the vibrant field of sociological climate change research. -- Libertad Chavez-Rodriguez, Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS, Mexico Translated Reviews from the German original Klimakulturen und Raum: Heimann's work represents an important addition to cultural and spatial research, particularly with regard to explanations for climate-cultural interpretation and action. (...) In addition to comprehensive background knowledge on climate change, on climate-cultural and communicative differences, and on the previous theoretical and methodological discourse, Heimann also offers significant new findings. His study is striking for having addressed the relation between space and culture, and for devising an approach for its investigation. (...) The innovative and profound theoretical and empirical approach of Culture, Space and Climate Change will be a rich resource for (...) social scientists interested in complex methods. -- Sybille Reitz, Chair of Energy and Environmental Policy, Technical University Munich; in: Pol-Int, pol-int.org, Februar 20, 2018 Altogether, Heimann provides an important contribution to the debates on environmental sociology, cultural sociology, sociology of knowledge, and spatial theory. Of particular value, because of its potential to be transferred to other contexts, is the development of an integrated and diverse explanatory model for the differences in perception of climate change and climate-adaptation measures. A key accomplishment of Culture, Space and Climate Change is the unbiased sophistication of its conclusions, achieved only by the tremendous effort made to consider such a great breadth of factors. -- Oskar Marg, in: Raumforschung und Raumordnung, Jg. 76, 2018