Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions
Overview
- Editors:
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Grete K. Hovelsrud
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Environmental Research - Oslo CICERO, Center for International Climate and, Oslo, Norway
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Barry Smit
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, Department of Geography, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
- Documents and assesses the nature of vulnerability in communities across the entire Arctic
- Interdisciplinary research approach
- Demonstrates the importance of a shared analytical framework for comparing results across case studies
- Empirical examples of vulnerabilities and adaptive strategies from a region of the world commonly viewed as having high susceptibility to climate change
About this book
The ‘Year’ That Changed How We View the North This book is about a new theoretical approach that transformed the field of Arctic social studies and about a program called International Polar Year 2007–2008 (IPY) that altered the position of social research within the broader polar science. The concept for IPY was developed in 2003–2005; its vision was for researchers from many nations to work together to gain cro- disciplinary insight into planetary processes, to explore and increase our understanding of the polar regions, the Arctic and Antarctica, and of their roles in the global system. IPY 2007–2008, the fourth program of its kind, followed in the footsteps of its predecessors, the first IPY in 1882–1883, the second IPY in 1932–1933, and the third IPY (later renamed to ‘International Geophysical Year’ or IGY) in 1957–1958. All earlier IPY/IGY have been primarily geophysical initiatives, with their focus on meteorology, atmospheric and geomagnetic observations, and with additional emphasis on glaciology and sea ice circulation. As such, they excluded socio-economic disciplines and polar indigenous people, often deliberately, except for limited ethnographic and natural history collection work conducted by some expeditions of the first IPY. That once dominant vision biased heavily towards geophysics, oceanography, and ice-sheets, left little if any place for people, that is, the social sciences and the humanities, in what has been commonly viewed as the ‘hard-core’ polar research.
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Article
Open access
04 August 2015
Table of contents (14 chapters)
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- Barry Smit, Grete K. Hovelsrud, Johanna Wandel, Mark Andrachuk
Pages 1-22
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- Grete K. Hovelsrud, Halvor Dannevig, Jennifer West, Helene Amundsen
Pages 23-62
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- Mark Andrachuk, Tristan Pearce
Pages 63-81
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- James D. Ford, Trevor Bell, Dominique St-Hilaire-Gravel
Pages 107-130
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- Sonia Wesche, Derek R. Armitage
Pages 163-189
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- Monica Tennberg, Terhi Vuojala-Magga, Minna Turunen
Pages 221-237
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- Ralph Matthews, Robin Sydneysmith
Pages 239-261
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- Christina Goldhar, James D. Ford
Pages 263-283
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- Stine Rybråten, Grete K. Hovelsrud
Pages 313-333
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- Grete K. Hovelsrud, Jeremy L. White, Mark Andrachuk, Barry Smit
Pages 335-348
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Back Matter
Pages 349-353
Reviews
From the reviews:
“This book aims to present a human approach to understanding the vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities of communities, particularly those in the Arctic, that are experiencing rapid socio-economic and environmental changes. … I recommend this book particularly for Arctic researchers … . The book is also recommended for students in the social sciences, who can increase their understanding of the vulnerability of Arctic communities and apply the framework and knowledge developed by the multidisciplinary team in their studies and future careers.” (Arctic, December, 2011)
Editors and Affiliations
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Environmental Research - Oslo CICERO, Center for International Climate and, Oslo, Norway
Grete K. Hovelsrud
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, Department of Geography, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
Barry Smit