Externe Publikationen

Climate change and everyday life in Toineke Village, West Timor: uncertainties, knowledge and adaptation

Hornidge, Anna-Katharina / Fabian Scholtes
Externe Publikationen (2011)

in: Sociologus 61 (2), 151-175

Environmental change, in particular as caused or aggravated by climate change, and its socioeconomic consequences inflict considerable risks on people, especially on poor people who depend very directly on their natural environment for their livelihoods. In this paper, we analyse how such changes affect the people of the village of Toineke in West Timor (Indonesia), which risks the changes involve, and how people cope with and adapt to these risks. In doing so, we refer to concepts and aspects put forward in Ulrich Beck's theory of risk societies, including uncertainty, lack of safety and insecurity as different categories of risk. Based on our analysis, we discuss which role knowledge, in connection with other forms of capital, plays in Toineke in living with and managing the consequences of climatic and environmental change.