Climato-Economic Imprints on Culture

For over 25 centuries, thinkers have speculated about the link between thermal climate and human culture. Only recently, scholars have started to turn these speculations into knowledge, making use of a special thermometer for measuring livability. This thermometer uses 22oC (about 72oF) as a basic point of reference for optimal livable temperatures. Downward cold deviations from 22oC in bitter winters and upward heat deviations from 22oC in scorching summers decrease livability and increase cultural adaptation to meet basic needs for thermal comfort, nutritional flora and fauna, and a healthy environment.
Cultural adaptions to thermal stress are mediated and modified by economic wealth resources for a simple reason. Money can buy clothing, housing, warming or cooling devices, meals, medical cure and care, and numerous other items to meet basic needs in climates with extreme temperatures. Thus, thermal demands and monetary resources interact in modifying cultural adaptation: away from threats toward challenges, away from collectivism toward individualism, away from power distance to power equality, away aggression toward cooperation, away from conformity toward creativity, etc.
Based on these theoretical points of departure, this symposium is devoted to three cutting-edge studies concentrating on cultural differences across space, time, and the space-time intersection, respectively. We start with a biogeographic perspective on conflict culture (first presentation) and a historical perspective on the development of cultural individualism (second presentation), continue with the manifestation of adaptational entrepreneurial activity in the here and now (third presentation), and end with ample debate initiated by the discussant and the audience.