SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter considers ways of listening across disciplinary, sectoral and cultural barriers in support of more culturally sensitive, inclusive approaches to development policy and practice. Responding to the growing appeal for creative solutions to the global climate crisis, it draws on Krista Ratcliffe’s framing of ‘rhetorical listening’ as a critical strategy to challenge prevailing hierarchies of knowledge about weather and climate adaptation. Arguing that weather forecasting practices are performative devices that give form to the ways in which perceptions of our worlds are shaped and enacted, the chapter applies the theatrical paradigm of ‘action replay’ – the repeated presentation of a scene but using different characters – to attune our listening to the spillages and overlaps between seemingly disparate weather practices. Ultimately, it asks how appreciation of both differences and similarities between climate ontologies may strengthen climate mitigation actions while simultaneously attend to climate-related socio-economic inequalities and biocultural rights.