3 Woosh–Cyclones as Culturalnatural Whirls: The Receptions of Climate Change in the Cook Islands

Abstract

As noted by Mike Hulme, the idea of climate change is now to be found active “across the full parade of human endeavours, institutions, practices and stories” (Hulme, 2009: 322). Hulme stresses that this should not make us think that a homogeneous climate change discourse has spread out evenly everywhere; the terrains are rugged, we believe in different things, have different concerns, and know different things, and moreover, the scientific accounts and projections are continuously changed, adjusted and improved. Furthermore, the reception in local communities is, as Rudiak-Gould has expressed it, not necessarily “treated as an obvious truth already plainly apparent to the senses, but as a prophecy whose truth or falsity cannot be taken for granted” (Rudiak-Gould, 2011: 11). In line with these observations, this chapter acknowledges that if it has ever been possible to understand society and nature as separate domains, then that is clearly no longer the case (e.g. Latour 1993). Climate change discourse and changes in the environment are continuously socialized and incorporated in social activities and human imagination, and the destabilization of known landscapes affects the sense of continuity. Thus, climate change is not just an object of study for the hard sciences, it is also a concern and a challenge for the humanities and the social sciences. This chapter takes us to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to explore responses to both climate changes discourse and first-hand observed changes in local weather patterns. First, I dwell on how five cyclones in 2005 became decisive in the Cook Islands’ early response to climate change as an observable reality. Secondly, I explore how this reception co-articulates with the whirling force and quality of the cyclones in order to reach an understanding of wider culturalnatural processes and the more recent, and somewhat surprising, changes in the predictions of cyclone activity in the South Pacific.