Litcius/Paper detail

Time as Kinship

Kyle Powys Whyte

2021Cambridge University Press eBooks101 citationsDOI

Abstract

Climate change is often discussed in terms of linear units of time. This chapter covers the meaning of linear time and its implications for how climate change is narrated. There are concerns about how narrating climate change in this way can eclipse issues of justice in the energy transition. There are of course different ways of telling time. This chapter provides a narration of climate change inspired by particular Indigenous scholars and writers. These conceptions of time narrate time through kinship, not linearity. One implication is that issues of justice are inseparable from the experience of climate change.

Topics & Concepts

KinshipClimate changeNarrativeIndigenousEconomic JusticeMeaning (existential)SociologyClimate justiceEnvironmental ethicsEpistemologyPolitical scienceLawAnthropologyLinguisticsPhilosophyEcologyBiologyIndigenous Studies and Ecology