Susan A. Crate, a leader in the anthropology of climate change, will present a lecture about the complexities and challenges of climate change and meet with students during a visit to Linfield College next month.
Crate, associate professor of anthropology at George Mason University, will speak on “Investigating the Bottom-up Complexities and Adaptive Challenges of Contemporary Climate Change in Northeastern Siberia and Nunatsiavut, Canada” Wednesday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Ice Auditorium in Melrose Hall. Humanity’s chances of adapting to large scale changes now underway must always be anchored in close understanding of how people actually deal with complex adaptive challenges on the ground. “If we move our focus to local contexts and reframe the objective of sustainability as a dialogue within those contexts, then the concept itself takes on a life and a power.”
Crate has become an authority on anthropology and climate change, both from her own research in arctic Siberia and as a member of the American Anthropology Association task force on global climate change. While Crate has conducted most of her research in Asiatic Russia and northeastern Siberia, and is involved in several international groups that focus on sustainability in the arctic, her interests in sustainability issues and projects extend to her teaching and service, especially in campus greening issues at George Mason.
She is centrally involved with the new film “The Anthropologist,” which considers the fate of the planet from the perspective of an American teenager. Over five years, she travels alongside her mother, an anthropologist studying the impact of climate change on indigenous communities.
Crate received her B.A. in environmental studies, with a concentration in education, from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She then received her master’s degree in folklore and her Ph.D. in ecology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The 12th annual anthropology lecture is sponsored by the Linfield Department of Sociology and Anthropology and by PLACE (Program for Liberal Arts and Community Engagement), exploring this year’s theme “Air, Water, Earth, and Fire: The Ancient Elements on a Changing Planet.” It is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Tom Love, Linfield professor of anthropology and environmental studies, at tlove@linfield.edu or 503-883-2504.
