The Climate Emergency Demands a New Kind of History: Pragmatic Approaches from Science and Technology Studies, Text Mining, and Affiliated Disciplines

2022/05/23 by Jo Guldi
Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Climate Change Communication and Perception #Computational and Text Analysis Methods #Sustainability and Climate Change Governance

paper · doi:10.1086/719704

openalex publication_date 2022/05/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

How shall we judge the element of practicality or urgency for scholars working in the era of the 2030 deadline for action on climate change? This essay surveys the reaction to climate change by scholars who work with data, using the philosopher Stephen Gardiner’s conceit of “corrupt institutions” to organize the approaches according to an index of pragmatic orientation. This survey will lead to the identification of some challenges for those seeking to engage the climate deadline with data, especially work making climate data more transparent, text mining to identify aspects of corruption and reform within contemporary institutions, and building infrastructure for citizen participation.

Citations

• The Geometry of Culture: Analyzing the Meanings of Class through Word Embeddings
• The Climate of History in a Planetary Age

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