080132 VU M520 Departmental Colloquium: Weather/Knowledge (2022S)

The institute colloquium is an interdisciplinary forum for dialogue on selected topics. In addition to content-related discussions on the general topic of "Weather/Knowledge", to which speakers from various disciplines and locations are invited, the colloquium also offers the opportunity for ongoing presentations and discussions master's and doctoral theses as well as research projects at the Institute for European Ethnology.
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Weather/Knowledge: Culture-analytical Perspectives on States of the Atmosphere.
The weather inescapably shapes our everyday life although in many different ways. It affects the well-being of every individual and provides constant cause for interpretation and prognosis, for anticipation and reaction. Experiencing and understanding the weather also requires specific forms of knowledge, technologies, and practices, some of which have become obsolete. The weather‘s often unremarked omnipresence makes it a prime topic for European ethnology as a science of everyday culture.
In times of climate change, weather, long considered an innocuous topic of conversation, has lost its guilelessness. It no longer appears as a "state of the atmosphere" that is unaffected and uninfluenceable by humans. At least since current debates about the Anthropocene, the question is no longer whether humans have an influence on the climate and thus on weather patterns, but how great these anthropogenic forces are and how to react to them. In this context, the differentiation between nature and culture established in modernity - and the associated orders of knowledge - are called into question, as is the role of humans in this network of relationships.
From a cultural-analytical perspective, this moment holds potential for insight. Like a disruptive event that irritates and thus brings to light routine and established ways of experiencing, acting, and thinking, the omnipresent discourse on climate change influences how weather is talked about and thought about, how it is anticipated and reacted to, and sometimes even how it is experienced. This moment promises a variety of insights that can make important contributions to a contemporary analysis.
The colloquium brings together contributions from economic and social history, history of science, media studies, cultural anthropology, climate science as well as European ethnology, which open up manifold perspectives on the topic of weather/knowledge, from micro-analytical approaches to global considerations.