Cultural studies: theories, methods, and contemporary applications

¶ … Hsiang et al. (2011) and Glazebrook (2011).

Hsiang, SM and Meng, KC and Canes, MA (2011).Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate. Nat u r e Vol (476).

In this article, Hsiang et al. (2011) argue out the proposition that civil conflicts are indeed associated with the global climate. According to the paper, there has been several propositions that the global climatic changes have been responsible for the various episodes of civil unrest, violence as well as the general collapse of human civilizations. The paper indicates that dispute this proposition, no previous study has been able to prove that violence can be a function of the global climatic changes. However, the authors stated categorically that just a random number of global weather patterns and events can be correlated with cases of conflict. In this work, the authors attempt to directly associate the various planetary-scale changes to the climate with the global patterns of civil unrest and conflicts via the examination of the main interannual mode of the global modern climate, namely the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).The authors points out that historians have long argued out that the incidents of ENSO may have played a part or rather influenced the global patterns of war and civil conflicts in the past. This hypothesis is indeed extended to the modern era by the authors and then tested quantitatively. The authors employed data gathered between 1950 and 2004 in showing that the probability of a new war or civil conflicts starting from the tropics is doubled in the years of El Nino years relative to the years of La Nina. This outcome indicates that the mode of ENSO may have a major role in close to twenty one percent (21%) of all the recorded civil conflicts from 1950. This is then regarded by the authors and the general body of academia as the very initial demonstration that the there is a relationship between the stability of the contemporary, modern societies and the global climatic conditions. According to Hsiang et al. (2011), the idea that the global climatic conditions may influence the level of peace in the global societies has been a motivation for several research works. They proposed that the global climatic conditions may affects certain interacting variables related to the environment that may in turn influence conflict within the society but may these may never be adequately revealed by the averages of rainfall and lo9cal temperature variables. The systematic changes to the environment that takes place on a planetary scale may in a manner influence the global markets, the geopolitics as well as other social systems in a different manner when compared to the location-specific shocks in weather conditions that are totally uncorrelated with the state of weather in certain other regions. The predictable weather changes as well as the unpredictable nature of weather shocks may in a way generate various different social responses regardless of their state and nature (whether identical or not).The paper argues out the correlation between weather and war in a unique and yet clear manner.

Glazebrook, T (2011).Women and Climate Change: A Case-Study from Northeast Ghana.

Hypatia. Vol (26) 4