Critical issues in social science climate change research

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges and opportunities for social scientists working on climate change research. Much work is required to expose and destabilise taken-for-granted assumptions about: (i) the nature of climate change, its complex ontology and knowledge-making practices; and (ii) how academic knowledge is made at the expense of other ways of knowing, doing and being in the world. I examine the relationship between the natural and social sciences, the epistemological question of what people are, and the multiple spaces, sites and practices across which and about which social science research on climate change is being produced.