Progress in Human Geography 34(2) (2010) pp. 234242DOI: 10.1177/0309132509338978Progress reportsCultural ecology: adaptation retrotting a concept?Lesley Head*GeoQuEST Research Centre and School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong 2522, AustraliaAbstract: Adaptation was a core concept of twentieth-century cultural ecology. It is having a new life in the context of debates over climate change, particularly as it becomes more signicant in public discourse and policy. In this third and nal progress report, I identify ways in which geographers and others are currently using the concept of adaptation, tracing both continuities and discontinuities with its earlier heritage. Three differences that warrant attention are the new mitigation/adaptation binary,thedeliberateandconsciousnatureofclimatechangeadaptation,andthefactthatthe stimulitowhichweareadaptingarecomplexassemblagescomprisingmore-than-climate.To retrottheconceptfortwenty-rst-centuryconditions,weshouldavoidthelimitationsof somepastuses,andenhanceitsoperationwithnewtechniquesandapproaches.Iidentifyfour threads in recent geographic research that enhance the retrot: cultural research around climate; emphasis on everyday practices; attention to the contingencies of scale; and more-than-human/more-than-nature theoretical conceptualizations.Key words: adaptation, climate change, culture, mitigation, more-than-climate, vulnerability.IAdapt now!Adapt now! is the rst of nine lessons sum-marizing the outcome of a major recent study into climate change adaptation (Leary et al., 2008).Theurgency,senseofpurposeand deliberatenessinthisinjunctionsituneasily with the notion of adaptation in longer-term histories of cultural evolution. Is this the same sort of adaptation, we wonder, that gave us the right sort of dentition to eat plants with undergroundstorageorgans(Ladenand Wrangham,2005),orledtothesurvival ofgrandmothers(OConnelletal.,1999; Alvard,2003;BirdandOConnell,2006)? Withwiderecognitionthatasignificant amountofanthropogenicclimatechangeis already locked into global systems, and that this will interact dynamically with underlying socio-ecologicalproblems,itisincreasingly acknowledged that adaptation is as important as mitigation (Smit et al., 2000; Adger et al., 2005;Pielkeetal.,2007).Geographersin-volvedintheIntergovernmentalPanelon Climate Change (IPCC) process have called formore,andmoresystematic,adaptation research(Liverman,2008a).Whatsort ofresearchwillandshouldthisbe?What understandingsandpracticesofadaptation *Email: lhead@uow.edu.au The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navLesley Head: Cultural ecology235arecirculatingasdepartments,thinktanks, plans,policies,frameworksandstrategies multiply?Dovers (2009: 4) argues that coherent dis-cussion of the theory and practice of [climate change]adaptationisquiterecent.Those whodebatedadaptationasacoreconcept of cultural ecology through the middle to late decades of the twentieth century might beg todisagree.Inthisthirdandfinalprogress report, I identify ways in which geographers and others are currently using the concept of adaptation,andtracebothcontinuitiesand discontinuitieswithitsearlierheritage.To retrot the concept for twenty-rst-century conditions, we should avoid the limitations of somepastuses,andenhanceitsoperation withnewtechniquesandapproaches.In the concluding section I suggest some impli-cations for ongoing research.IIThe twentieth-century modelInpractice,adaptationhaslongbeena slipperyconceptwithavarietyofapplic-ations. It invokes change along a continuum betweengeneralexibilityandquitespe-cificreconfigurationsofgeneticmaterial. Adaptation in cultural ecology was an exten-sionofitsuseinevolutionarybiology,and referstotheprocessbywhichindividuals adjustedtotheirsurroundings.Inregardto humansocieties,scholarstypicallydistin-guished between biological (genetic, physio-logical,skeletal)andculturaladaptation. The latter involved not just (and sometimes noteven)theindividual,butthebroader cultural group or community. Thus migrant groupswerestudied,asgroups,asthey adapted to new environments (eg, Mannion, 1974). The term adaptive strategy was also usedforthesystemofeconomicproduc-tion(Cohen,1974),asinhunter-gatherer adaptive strategies. In this way a concept of culturedevelopedthatencompassedboth adaptivestrategiesemployedbypeople living in particular conditions and systems ofmeaningtowhichhumansmustalso adapt (Keyes, 1977: 9).Severaltensionsrelevanttotodaywere presentinearlierdiscussions.Workingina climateinfluencedbysystemstheoryand by broader structures of explanation-seeking generalizability,Brookeld(1973:5)wrote that he felt obliged to avoid the sin of par-ticularism but was unable to. This was con-nected to the role of the individual vis--vis the broader society (Edgerton, 1971). What was the relevant unit of analysis? The broader contextherewasanassumptionthatso-called primitive peoples, the focus of so much adaptationworkinculturalecology,had xed cultures. Further, the term adaptation containswithinitasenseofchangeand movement,sohowwerescholarstodeal with apparent lack of change? The matching concept of maladaptation was used, often connectedtoconservativepatternsofbe-haviour in peasant and tribal societies. We nd we have to deal with behaviour that by objectivestandardsseemsirrational (Brookeld, 1973: 9).Although cultural was distinguished from biological adaptation, it retained a biological legacy.Morespecically,itretainedamid-century systems perspective on biology and ecology.This,arguedWatts(1983),had twoparticularimplications.First,people and nature were seen as discrete entities culture and environment in which the latter isseenaslimiting,non-dynamicandgen-erally stable (p. 235). This leads to a billiard ball view of the world (p. 235) in which pre-constitutedentitiesinteract.Second,such interactionisunderstoodinneo-Darwinian termstodiscusshumanadaptation,ie,the maintenance of homeostasis is the assumed outcome. Society is understood as a type of self-regulating, self-organizing living system isomorphicwithnatureitself(p.237);its goal is nothing more than survival (p. 236). Wattsarguedinsteadforanapproachthat understood human adaptation as the appro-priationandtransformationofnatureinto material means of social reproduction. This process is both social and cultural and it re-ectstherelationshipstoandparticipation 236Progress in Human Geography 34(2)intheproductionprocess(p.242).Rather thanassumingcyberneticregulationwithin social systems, this approach recognizes that theyareaccumulative,contradictoryand unstable (p. 239).Many things have changed since Watts cri-tique. The emerging new ecology criticized thehomeostaticviewwithinecologyitself, asitbecameincreasinglyclearthattheas-sumption of stability within nature was awed. More dynamic understandings of adaptation have emerged to match. For example, adap-tive management is understood as a capacity to change, be exible and respond quickly to surpriseanddifference(Folkeetal.,2005). Conti ngencyi severywhere(Si mmons, 2006). A much more dynamic view of culture emerged from the cultural turn of the 1980s and 1990s, and more has been written on the social production of nature than anyone has beenabletoread,decisivelysmashingthe billiard balls and reconstituting them in new relationships.Whereadaptationhascur-rencyforgeographersasaconceptoutside climatechange,forexampleinhazards research,thetendencyisnolongertouse itinbluntlyfunctionalistways,anditis linked with concepts like risk, resilience and vulnerability.PerhapsIamundulynervousthatwe coul deasi l yfi ndoursel vesbacki nthe 1950s.However,Iargueherethatthereis ariskofdiscrediteddualismsbecomingre-embeddedinpatternsofthinkingandpro-posedsolutionstoproblems.Recognition ofanthropogenicclimatechangethrough thelastdecadesofthetwentiethcentury was in many ways the nal nail in the cofn ofenvironmentaldeterminism.Itwasalso anotherdemonstrationthat,ifhumansand theiractivitiesareembeddedinthevery structure of the atmosphere, we needed new waysofthinkingaboutthings.Itwillbea tragic irony in more ways than one if we now talkaboutadaptationinwaysthatsimply reproduce earlier deterministic models, albeit thebilliardballknockingusaroundispartly of our own making.IIIClimate change how is adaptation different in these debates?The IPCC denes adaptation as the adjust-ment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects,whichmoderatesharmorexploits benecial opportunities (Parry et al., 2007: 6). Apart from its focus on climate as the rele-vantstimulus,thisdefinitionhasmuchin common with earlier uses in cultural ecology. HereIidentifythreedifferencesthatwar-rant attention.1The mitigation/adaptation binaryItisarguablewhethertheclimatechange debate has gone beyond the nature/culture binary, but it has certainly created a new one, that of mitigation/adaptation. (Mitigation is definedastechnologicalchangeandsub-stitutionthatreduceresourceinputsand emissionperunitofoutputofgreenhouse gases;IPCC,2007:84.)Thisseparation isembodiedintheallocationstoworking groupsoftheIPCC(mitigationtoworking groupIII,adaptationtoworkinggroupII). Geographers have been involved since early in the process, including Barnett (2001) who notedthenareluctancebytheIPCCto defineadaptation.Adaptationcamelate totheKyotoProtocolnegotiations(Grist, 2008),partlybecausetheuncertaintiesof the science until that point [2001] meant that inevitable climate impacts were not known in sufcient detail to provide a basis for policy creation(Grist,2008:791).Earlypapers suchasBarnett(2001)wereframedvery much in how to create policy for uncertainty. Others have argued that adaptation was the juniorpartner,allowedlatetothediscus-sion, because to do so would seem defeatist (Pielke et al., 2007; Biesbroek et al., 2009).An emerging body of work examines the history of the dichotomy and its institution-alization(FsselandKlein,2006;Schipper, 2007; Larsen and Gunnarsson-stling, 2009; Biesbroeketal.,2009).FsselandKlein arguethattheconceptualthinkingaround adaptation has changed and continues to do Lesley Head: Cultural ecology237so, moving from simple impact assessments thatsuperimposefutureclimatescenarios onanotherwiseconstantworld(p.324) throughvulnerabilityassessmentsthatpay moreattentiontotheadaptivecapacity ofsocieties,determinedbynon-climatic factorssuchaseconomicresources,skills andinstitutions,andincorporatetheidea of resilience.Thenature/culturebinaryistendingto reinforce others; mitigation is seen as a top-down process for national governments and theinternationalcommunity,whileadap-tation is bottom-up for individuals and local communities (Garnaut, 2008). Mitigation is long term, adaptation is short term. Import-antworkisnowidentifyingbothsynergies andpotentialconflictsbetweenthetwo (Liverman,2008a;Pizarro,2009).Intheir study of land-use plans and policies designed toaddresscl i matechange,Hami nand Gurran (2009) found that in a sample of 50, 22 had potential conicts between mitigation andadaptation.Forexample,densication of urban areas to reduce car use (mitigation) conflictswithprovisionofadditionalopen space to enable water inundation in extreme events (adaptation).2Adaptation as a deliberate and conscious processThere is no place in the climate change policy debate for accidental adaptation, unless we failtotakeappropriateactionandthusbe-comemaladaptedinthelongrun.Thisisa processthatisdeliberateandrequirescon-scious and explicit policy responses (Schipper, 2007). We can adapt to climate change and limittheharm,orwecanfailtoadaptand risk much more severe consequences (Leary et al., 2008: 1).Relatedtothisisthetestofourfaithin science as a means of prediction and dealing with uncertainty. As Adapt now! suggests, weneedtodoitbeforewecanseeit.We have to trust scientists and their predictions.3 What is the stimulus?Although the IPCC denition talks of climatic stimuli, the process that will stimulate con-sciousadaptationisacomplexassemblage incorporatingmanyelementsinaddition toclimaticones.Wearerespondingtothe stimuli of science, policy-makers, media and fear,ratherthan(oratleastinadditionto) climate itself. As the recent tragic bushres insoutheasternAustraliaillustrate,evenin extremeeventswherethereisprobablya climaticelementofanewandalterednor-mality,theadaptationassemblageincludes underlyingsocio-economicconditionsand changing patterns of land use. A public dis-courseframedaroundthebinaryofwasit climate change or not? is not only poorly con-ceived, but unnecessarily distressing at a time when social collaboration is at a premium.IVThe retrot four aspectsThe exibility and accessibility of the adap-tationconcepthasalreadygivenitaplace intheinternationalpolicyarenaandin morelocalpublicimaginations.Thiswill only increase in coming years. What contri-butionscangeographersinfluencedbythe culturalecologytraditionmake,andwhat arethebestwaysinwhichtoretrofitthe concept?1Cultures of climateWith research efforts having hitherto focused onestablishingthesciencebehindclimate change,itisnowwellrecognizedthatthe problems require social and cultural as well as scienticsolutions.Scienticleadersthem-selvesnowfrequentlycallforaculture changeinourenvironmentalpositioning. Itisimportantforgeographersandothers tomobilizemoredynamicunderstandings ofculturedevelopedoverthelasttwode-cadesinthesedebates.Forexample,itis necessary to forestall framings that envisage toostraightforwardalinkbetweenpublic education and behavioural change.238Progress in Human Geography 34(2)As Lorenzoniet al. (2007) demonstrate, increasingknowledgedoesnotnecessarily result in changed behaviour. The necessary culturalchangeswillbeextremelycomplex andoccurattheintersectionofindividual, soci al andi nsti tuti onal behavi oursand attitudes.Weshouldfirstacceptamandateto maintain cultural analyses of the concept of adaptation, the assumptions embedded in its usage, and the slippage of its application (see alsoFssel,2007,onvulnerability).There willberoomformorethanonehistoryof the idea, in the vein of Takacs (1996) for bio-diversity.Theimportanceofanalysingthe public discourse has been well illustrated by theworkofDemeritt(2001a;2001b;inde-bate with Schneider, 2001; see also Carvalho, 2007).Livermans(2008b)explorationof three narratives provides a recent exemplar that has additional power because the author has been embedded in the political/scientic process of the IPCC (Liverman, 2008a).Iwouldarguethatthestoriesofdangerous climatechangeconveyedinthesepowerful images of burning embers and tipping points arepredominantlybiophysical,withhuman systems and geographies relatively unexplored or obscured. As in the earlier days of climate impactassessmenttheapproachtendsto-wardsanenvironmentaldeterminismdriven by climate science and lacks a nuanced analysis ofvulnerabilityandthedistributionofrisks andcapacitytoadapttothem.(Liverman, 2008b: 910)Suchdespatchesfromdifferenttypesof frontline(seealsoAdgeretal.,2009) should become increasingly important. Self-reflexivityamonggeographersworkingin theadaptationeldwillmaintainahealthy critique from within, while making practical contributions.Thebroaderimportanceofculturalan-alysisinclimatechangedebatehasbeen highlightedbyHulme(2008).Arefreshing diversityofresearchprojectsisemerging (Boykoff, 2007; 2008; Gorman-Murray, 2008; McCormack, 2008; Boykoff and Goodman, 2009;McNamaraandGi bson,2009), informedbytwodecadesofculturalturn in geography and elsewhere. Pollard et al.s (2008)workonweatherderivativesispar-ticularly fascinating, partly for the potential conversationsthetopicenhancesbetween humanandphysicalgeographers.Other areasofthehumanitiesarealsoactively researchingculturesofclimate(Sherratt etal.,2005;PotterandStar,2006;Orlove et al., 2008).As in other elds where engagement with indigenous approaches profoundly reorients the original question, attempts to take seri-ouslyindigenousknowledgesinstudiesof climate change adaptation and vulnerability/resilience have in fact to deal with challenges to the terms of the debate (Leduc, 2006). In thiscaseindigenousknowledgemaychal-lenge the idea that climate change is a problem that we can and must do something about. There will be important cultural differences intheextentoffatalismaboutthefuture that need analysis both within and between different community groups.2Attention to everyday practicesMethodologically, attention to everyday prac-tices using ethnographic and related methods isalong-standingattributeofadaptation studiesinculturalecology,mostlyinrural and developing contexts. Social dimensions ofadaptationhavereceivedmostattention inrelationtothedevelopingworld,where communitiesandnationsarerecognized tobeparticularlyvulnerable(Adger,2003; Ziervogeletal.,2006;Osbahretal.,2008; MortreuxandBarnett,2009),andalsoin relation to indigenous people (eg, Berkes and Jolly, 2001; Nyong et al., 2007; Ford et al., 2008).Relatively wealthy well-educated countries areoftenassumedtohavestrongadaptive capacity(BrooksandKelly,2005),leading toafocusontechnologicaldimensionsof adaptation,suchasagronomicchangesin Lesley Head: Cultural ecology239the case of agriculture. The retrot not only bringsdevelopedurbansocietiesunderthe research umbrella (eg, OBrien et al., 2006, forNorway),butalsoconnectsbehaviour moresystematicallywithtechnological change,forexampleintheworkofShove (2003)andHobson(2006).Thiswillprob-ably mean drawing on research methods and approaches that have been more commonly usedinthedevelopingworld(eg,partici-patory approaches; Kelkar et al., 2008). It will alsomeanmoreattentiontothehousehold scale of analysis (Thornton et al., 2009).Other useful connections have been made withpsychologicalassessmentsofriskbe-haviour(GrothmannandPatt,2005),and analysis of the strengths of belief in climate change (Blennow and Persson, 2009).Assumptionsaboutadaptivecapacity are being challenged. Many parts of the de-velopingworldhavegreatresilienceand adaptivecapacity(BerkesandJolly,2001; Coulthard, 2008), and well-established insti-tutionsmaylacktheflexibilitytorespond quickly. Further, diversity in vulnerability and resilienceisincreasinglyrecognizedwithin broader social categories as well as between them (eg, Acosta-Michlik et al., 2008). Adger et al. (2009) explore the interaction of ethics, knowledge,riskandcultureinconstructing the social limits to adaptation.3Scale in space and timeAdaptationisanareademandingcritical attention to questions of scale (Adger et al., 2005; Pelling et al., 2008), and Slocum (2004) hasdrawnattentiontoimportantconnec-tions between scale and everyday practice. It is important that the valorization of the local and the individual in some adaptation policies does not go unexamined. As discussed above, the mitigation/adaptation binary can tend to entrenchasimplisticviewofadaptationas alocalizedandindividualizedprocess,with insufficientattentiongiventoquestionsof power and scaling up. There are productive connectionstobeforgedherewithdiscus-sionabouttheneoliberalizationofnature (Castree,2008a;2008b).Castree(2008a) identifiesscale-crossingandscale-jumping as one of the distinctive strengths of recent geographicstudiesoftheneoliberalization of nature.More dynamic and relational approaches to temporal scale will also be needed, in part tocontestaneatdividebetweenclimate change time and now or before (depending onwhetheryouthinkwearethereyet). Learyetal.(2008)provideanexampleof such (inadvertent?) delineation:The implication is that current practices, pro-cesses,systemsandinfrastructurethatare moreorlessadaptedtothepresentclimate willbecomeincreasinglyinappropriateand maladaptedastheclimatechanges.Fine tuning current strategies to reduce risks from historicallyobservedclimatehazardswill not be sufcient in this dynamically changing environment.Morefundamentaladjust-ments will be needed. (Leary et al., 2008: 8)Consideration of temporal scale questions will beofmorethanacademicsignicance.For example, Dovers, while acknowledging that there will be a set of climate changes beyond human experience and institutional memory (2009: 4), is also anxious that we do not try to reinvent the wheel by failing to acknow-ledgeadaptivecapacitiesbuiltintoexisting environmental management systems.4More-than-human approaches go with the new ecologyAnumberofgeographershaveidentified synergies between new ecology, contingency in long-term environmental change, and rela-tional more-than-human geographies, that have relevance to rethinking adaptation. For example, most recently Gandy writes:Theshiftinemphasisfromcyclicaltohis-torical(non-cyclical)conceptionsoftime incombinationwithrelationalratherthan xed conceptions of scale suggest a degree of conceptualconvergencebetweenthelatest insights in ecological science and a variety of developmentswithinhumangeographyand cognatedisciplinesincludinganemphasison 240Progress in Human Geography 34(2)non-hierarchical patterns of spatial difference, extended conceptions of agency and a wide-rangingengagementwithnewphilosophies ofsocialandspatialcomplexity.(Gandy, 2008: 563)Thisemphasisonrelationalitychimeswith argumentsthatadaptationstudieshave notfullyconsideredhowclimateinteracts withotherdrivers(Thomasetal.,2007; Liverman, 2008a; 2008b; Wei et al., 2009), and that some are therefore the equivalent of earlierenvironmentallydeterministicviews ofadaptation(Liverman,2008a:5).The complexityofclimatechangedebates,and theintractabilityofthegeopoliticalissues entwinedwiththem,cantendtoenhance simplemetaphors.Adaptationisanattrac-tive concept in this regard. Yet, if geographers can resist the urge to holism, there is a pos-sibly stronger contribution we can make:the new ecology makes much more modest scientificclaimsthanthesystems-basedap-proachesofthepastandhenceitspotential contribution to public policy is of necessity dif-ferent in its scope but arguably more accurate, real i sti candepi stemol ogi cal l ynuanced, includingafullerrecognitionoftheroleof differentformsoftechnicalexpertisewithin political discourse. (Gandy, 2008: 563)Signicant practitioners of the new ecology not only recognize the importance of social andculturalhistory(Hobbs,2008)but extendtheheterogeneitytothesolutions themselves: if rapid environmental change is to become the norm, having an array of dif-ferentapproachesmaybethebestwayof buildingresilienceintobothourmanage-mentandtheecosystemsthemsel ves (Hobbs, 2008: 8).Adaptation looks set to be around in public discourse for the foreseeable future. The kind of geographic labour discussed in this section is starting to retrot it for that future in very useful ways. Vigilant attention to discourses andpracticesofpowerwillcontinuetobe important, as will critical attention to ques-tionsofscale.Methodologiesthatengage withdiversityineverydaypracticesexpose vernacular capacities as well as vulnerabilities. Theoreticalframeworksthatexplorethe relationality of ecologies, technologies, bodies andsocialitieswillbevital.Asincreasing numbersofgeographersbecomeactivein adaptation policy, ethnographic reection on our own involvement will serve us well.ReferencesAcosta-Michlik, L., Kelkar, U. and Sharma, U. 2008: A critical overview: local evidence on vulnerabilities andadaptationstoglobalenvironmentalchangein developing countries. Global Environmental Change 18, 53942.Adger, W.N. 2003: Social capital, collective action, and adaptationtoclimatechange. 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