Drivers of Climate Change in Urban India: Social Values, Lifestyles, and Consumer Dynamics in an Emerging Megacity

ISBN-13: 9783319966694 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 271 str.

Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf

Opis

This study transcends the homogenizing (inter-)national level of argumentation (`rich' versus `poor' countries), and instead looks at a sub-national level in two respects: (1) geographically it focuses on the rapidly growing megacity of Hyderabad;

Recenzje

"Drivers of Climate Change in Urban India appears most useful for social scientists studying climate change, or climate scientists interested in social and cultural impacts on emissions, especially those looking to apply a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research tools in specific urban settings." (Christine Ro, E&U Enviroment & Urbanization, environmentandurbanization.org, May 06, 2019)

Spis treści

Chapter1. Introduction: Climate change and lifestyle – the relevance of new concepts for socialecological research.- Chapter2. Approaches of measuring human impacts on climate change.- Chapter3. The research context: India and the megacity of Hyderabad.- Chapter4. Conceptualisation and operationalisation – A social geography of climate change: Social-cultural mentalities, lifestyle, and related GHG emission effects in Indian cities.- Chapter5. Results part I – Descriptive analysis of manifest variables and preparation of latent components for the lifestyle analysis.- Chapter6. Results part II – Income, practice, and lifestyle-oriented analysis of personal-level GHG emissions.- Chapter7. Discussion.- Chapter8. Final conclusions – Understanding inequalities in consumption-based, personal level GHG emissions.

O autorze

Dr. Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf is a social geographer at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany.

Blurb

This study transcends the homogenizing (inter-)national level of argumentation (‘rich’ versus ‘poor’ countries), and instead looks at a sub-national level in two respects: (1) geographically it focuses on the rapidly growing megacity of Hyderabad; (2) in socio-economic terms the urban population is disaggregated by taking a lifestyle typology approach. For the first time, the lifestyle concept – traditionally being used in affluent consumer societies – is applied to a dynamically transforming and socially heterogeneous urban society. Methodically, the author includes India-specific value orientations as well as social practices as markers of social structural differentiation. The study identifies differentials of lifestyle-induced GHG emissions (carbon footprints) and underlines the ambiguity of a purely income based differentiation with regard to the levels of contribution to the climate problem.