Human Ecology

, Volume 43, Issue 3, pp 505–506 | Cite as

Andrew J. Hoffman: How Culture Shapes Climate Change

Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2015, (ISBN 9780804794220) Price $12.99 (paperback). ix+90 pages, notes
  • Adrian PeaceEmail author

Raymond Williams famously remarked that “Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” and one of the reasons he gave was that the term had become integral to a number of distinct and not necessarily compatible systems of thought (Williams 1976). In my own discipline of anthropology and some cognate ones, scholars have worked hard to formulate measured and useful definitions of culture. Despite the concept figuring prominently in the title of his book, Andrew Hoffman has no interest in definitional issues. His concern is with the “cultural schism” over climate change that runs through American society, and how a new cadre of “climate brokers” might bridge this divide by building trust and consensus among currently hostile groups and parties.

Hoffman himself is in no doubt that consensus exists within the scientific community that global warming is the most pressing issue facing mankind today. He points to a succession of reports from the United...


  1. Williams, R. (1976). Keywords. Flamingo, London.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of QueenslandBrisbaneAustralia

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