When politicians and planners think about climate adaptation, they’re often considering the hard edges of infrastructure and economics. Will we divert flooding? Should we restore shorelines? Can we fireproof homes? Folklorist Maida Owens believes such questions don’t capture the full picture. When climate disaster comes for the diverse Cajun and Creole fishing communities of Louisiana’s islands and bayous, it has the potential to tear their cultural fabric apart.
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“There’s more to community resilience than the physical protection of properties,” Owens, who works with Louisiana’s state folklife program, told Grist.
Radical change is already occurring. Louisiana’s coast is slowly being swallowed by the sea; the Southwest is drying out; Appalachia’s transition from coal has been no less disruptive than a recent battery of floods and storms. These crises, which are unfolding nationwide, interrupt not only infrastructure, but the rituals and remembrances that make up daily life.
The study of those rituals and remembrances may seem like an esoteric discipline, one relegated to exploring quaint superstitions of the past or documenting old men in overalls playing homemade instruments. It’s true that those who study and preserve folklore don’t concern themselves with high art — that is, the sort of thing supported by networks of…
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