Paper short abstract:

This paper reviews key epistemic, intellectual, institutional and practical challenges experienced by an anthropologist working with climate scientists.

Paper long abstract:

Climate scientists may have moved centre stage as a new elite of the global scientific 'community', but they are required to engage far more concretely now with the worlds of government and private sector, explain in meticulous detail degrees of uncertainty and simplify complex ideas to aid policy-making.

In this paper, I reflect on two dialogues I have engaged in with climate scientists over the past five years through my involvement in international research programmes aimed at both 'excellent science' and development intervention in African climate science contexts.

Drawing on the work of Mosse (2005), I consider the 'mobilisation' work of research programmes, the composition of research teams and the levels of seniority of different researchers within these teams. I then explore the nature of commitments to interdisciplinary research collaboration, starting with explicit understandings of interdisciplinarity in projects documents and initial team meetings, and the cues that donors and fund managers do or do not provide in this regard. I review evidence for the degree of openness on the part of Principal Investigators and team members to engage with social science and indigenous/local knowledge communities. I consider some of the challenges of producing forms of 'useful' knowledge that can satisfy funders' and in-country partners' needs and still allow team members to publish in their respective (still largely) discipline-based journals. I conclude by suggesting that the reality of climate change makes carefully structured dialogues with natural scientists far more urgent than before.

Mosse, D. (2005) Cultivating Development. London: Pluto Press.