Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

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Sociocultural dimension in agriculture adaptation

to climate change

Lorena Casanova-Pérez, Juan Pablo Martínez-Dávila, Silvia López-Ortiz,

Cesáreo Landeros-Sánchez & Gustavo López-Romero

To cite this article: Lorena Casanova-Pérez, Juan Pablo Martínez-Dávila, Silvia López-Ortiz,
Cesáreo Landeros-Sánchez & Gustavo López-Romero (2016) Sociocultural dimension in
agriculture adaptation to climate change, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 40:8,
848-862, DOI: 10.1080/21683565.2016.1204582

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AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS
2016, VOL. 40, NO. 8, 848–862
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2016.1204582

Sociocultural dimension in agriculture adaptation to

climate change
Lorena Casanova-Pérez, Juan Pablo Martínez-Dávila, Silvia López-Ortiz,
Cesáreo Landeros-Sánchez, and Gustavo López-Romero
Colegio de Postgraduados, Agroecosistemas Tropicales, Veracruz, Mexico

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Societal responses to climate change are influenced by culture, Adaptation; agriculture;
but this has not been the focus of understanding and adapting climate change;
to this phenomenon. This process is critical when examining sociocultural dimension;
theoretical approaches
agriculture, an eminently social activity that has an historic
perspective and characteristic manners of production
expressed by the culture carrying it out. Therefore, the present
study analyzes and compares the theoretical–conceptual
approaches used in the role of culture in agricultural adapta-
tion to climate change, given the paradigmatic bias in each.
This information is essential for the design and implementation
of agricultural adaptation strategies having social and cultural
viability.

Introduction
The discovery by Keeling of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide in 1958
can be considered as the beginning of progressive concern about the
effects of human activities on climate dynamics (Beck 2008). This led, in
1979, to the first world conference on climate, during which participants
considered for the first time that climate change was a real threat to the
world. This meeting was a precedent for the emergence of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 (IPCC
2004), a group of experts who have since been responsible for a series
of assessment reports in 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, and 2013. Until 2001,
IPCC recommendations were directed primarily toward actions to
reduce, or mitigate, emissions of greenhouse gases (IPCC 2001). Yet,
in its fourth report, scientists provided sufficient arguments to justify
taking adaptive actions as a priority (IPCC 2007) because the effects of
this phenomenon impact the economics, health, nutrition, and safety of
societies, especially in developing countries (Barnett and Adger 2007;
IPCC 2007; Stern 2007).

CONTACT Juan Pablo Martínez-Dávila [email protected] Km 85.5 Carretera Xalapa-Veracruz, Predio

Tepetates, Municipio de Manlio Fabio Altamirano, Veracruz, México, C.P. 91690; Apartado Postal 421, Veracruz,
Veracruz, México, C.P. 91700.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
 AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS 849

This shift is interesting, especially since the scientific agenda promoted by

the IPCC has influenced investigations at the global level, an agenda that
improves scientific work based on models and foresight (Lampis 2013). The
models are based on inherent climate complexity associated with emergent
behaviors of modern society, and, thus, are partial representations of reality
made by using simplified versions of the atmosphere, oceans, and societal
behavior (Yearley 2009). Results from these investigations have provided
valuable and necessary information, but not sufficient to understand the
motivations of local societies in developing countries as to whether or not
to carry out adaptive measures to reduce impacts from climate change. This
happens because only partial knowledge results from most research efforts by
natural science academics (Nagel et al. 210; Lara 2013). As such, there is only
partial understanding of the phenomena to help identify problems with
emissions, mitigation, and protection of strategic ecosystems, as well as the
estimation and reduction of impacts (Lampis 2013).
Hence, the objective of this review is to argue for the importance and
contributions of sociocultural studies to encourage agricultural adaptation
to climate change. In addition, we want to understand the epistemological
implications regarding the use of certain cultural theories or pivotal con-
cepts associated with agricultural adaptation to climate change. We also
want to recognize the influence of the epistemic perspective of investiga-
tors in their work (Padron [2007] mentions that investigators have certain
pre-theoretical and precognitive filters, which condition the way they
know and involve certain preconceptions about what knowledge is and
how it is produced and validated). This requires analyzing and comparing
theoretical–conceptual approaches, methodologies, and results produced
by investigations across disciplines, studies made by geographers, agrono-
mists, meteorologists, sociologists, and anthropologists around the world,
and studies carried out by scholars interested in the environment and
development.
All articles reviewed were published during 2008–2013 in databases for
researchers such as JSTOR, Elsevier, Sage Publications, Springer Link, and
Taylor and Francis. Keywords included climate change, agriculture, adapta-
tion, culture, and agroecosystem. In the first phase, we selected and reviewed
110 articles, and in the second phase 32 articles were identified, which
involved at least four of the keywords above. As for content analysis, the
categories used were: area of study, study objective, theoretical perspective
used, method (sample type, variables, analysis techniques used), and main
findings. The content analysis was qualitative, a technique that allowed for
the analysis of communications (in this case writing of a scientific nature) in
order to systematize them through a series of categories that presented the
manifest content and the latent content in each of the reviewed articles
(Piñuel 2002).
850 L. CASANOVA-PÉREZ ET AL.

1. Agriculture adaptation to climate change: the role of culture

Climate change is happening now and its effects are disrupting ways of life and
production for societies worldwide, thus, adaptation has been considered as
a priority for more than a decade by IPCC (2007) in its Fourth Assessment
Report. How do we adapt to this phenomenon? Fowler (2008) mentioned that
society will not be able to adapt to climate change without adapting agriculture
because agriculture is the basis of world food production, as well as for the
generation of raw materials needed to satisfy other global needs. Therefore, the
effects of climate change on agriculture are troublesome. In this regard, the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2013) reported that
events, such as the drought in the United States and Eastern Europe during
2011 and 2012, caused low yields and high losses of crops. As well, the report
mentions that damage to agricultural production in many Latin American
countries in late 2011 and early 2012 were a result of La Niña. The countries
with higher losses were Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and
Mexico. The damages were associated with changes in temperature and pre-
cipitation, climatic elements having an intimate and intricate relationship with
agriculture (Howe et al. 2013; Müller 2011), and are provoking greater uncer-
tainties for producers (Altieri and Nicholls 2008; Kostel 2009). Some have lost
confidence in their prior knowledge and practices, as well as in conventional
sources of climate information, as they no longer provide certainty for plan-
ning agricultural activities (Torres, Rodríguez, and Ramírez 2009; West,
Roncoli, and Ouattara 2008). This implies that producers are making abrupt
decisions that are expressed as changes in management practices in their
agroecosystems, results that are inadequate and insufficient to deal with the
effects of climate change.
It is important to recognize that many authors agree with such findings but do
not always express that climate change is the main driver of agroecosystem
transformation. Müller (2011) suggests that for some African societies climate
change is not the only challenge for agriculture, or at least not the most
important. Mertz et al. (2009), in a study conducted in Senegal, found that the
transformation of agroecosystems by producers is influenced by a range of
factors, however, climate does not appear as a problem. Similar situations
occurred in studies in Sri Lanka (Esham and Garforth 2013), Bolivia
(McDowell and Hess 2012), Australia (Becken, Lama, and Espiner 2013;
Rogers, Curtis, and Mazur 2012), Mozambique (Silva, Eriksen, and Ombre
2010), Tanzania (Bunce, Rosendo, and Brown 2010), the United States (Coles
and Scott 2009), and the Philippines (Calderon 2010), where economic changes
in these countries are results of adjustments to their development policies. The
situation has brought increased pressure on producers who have been forced to
change their agroecosystem management practices, making it more difficult for
producers to respond to the effects of climate change.
 AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS 851

Initial investigations of agriculture adaptation to climate change were

focused on identifying the material conditions for its determination. Since
then, inputs from the social sciences have provided a predominantly eco-
nomic approach. Based on a categorization of 14,000 references mentioned in
the third IPCC Assessment Report in 2001, Bjurström and Polk (2011) found
that only 12% of the investigations were in the social sciences, and the
majority of these were economic studies. This trend is still prevalent in the
current IPCC scientific agenda, and is a problem for the implementation of
agriculturally adaptive actions to the effects of climate change, as it is an
activity further expressing the complex relationship between society and
nature where production forms are mediated by culture (Adger et al. 2013;
Raymond and Spoeher 2013).
Until recently, little of the existing research on climate change had adopted
a perspective for identifying and understanding the role of culture in the
perception of limits and possibilities for societal adaptation to this phenom-
enon (Jones and Boyd 2011; Nagel, Dietz, and Broadbent 2010).
Marginalization of sociocultural studies prevents a holistic understanding
of the phenomenon in question (Bunce, Rosendo, and Brown 2010;
Hoffman 2011; Nagel, Dietz, and Broadbent 2010); culture determines the
dominant modes of production, consumption and lifestyles (Adger et al.
2013). In other words, the study of cultural dimension in the process of
adaptation to climate change allows us to understand how two societies in
the same environment and with similar experiences can respond differently
to adaptation, and by using different strategies, result in the historical con-
struction of their cultural values and social relations (Nielsen and Reenberg
2010). This answers the question of why in some societies the provision of
and access to resources are not sufficient for them to adapt (López-Marrero
2010) and encourages us to understand that local contexts of communication
associated with climate change are important, as well as assessing their
influence on societal motivation to make adaptive changes (Habiba, Shaw,
and Takeuchi 2012; Nursey-Bray et al. 2012).
Another aspect that is explored when studying the sociocultural dimension
in the process of adaptation to climate change is the effect from its apparent
“invisibility.” O’Neill et al. (2013) explain that this occurs because many
people often perceive it as distant from their own daily experiences, or that
climate variability is temporary or seasonal, and will return to normal in the
future (Nielsen and Reenberg 2010). Additional sociocultural research
addresses the conceptualization of climate change by researchers and deci-
sion-makers who consider it from the perspectives of sustainable develop-
ment, economic development, immigration, and national security (Rahman
2013; Vlassopoulos 2012). Such studies improve our understanding of the
influence of ideology on the identification and definition of climate change
and its possible solutions (Hoffman 2011). For example, the Pew Research
852 L. CASANOVA-PÉREZ ET AL.

Center (2009) in the United States showed 75% of Democrats believed that
there was solid evidence for global warming, compared with 35% of
Republicans and 53% of independent voters.
Thus, it is important that sociocultural studies of adaptation to climate
change no longer have an emergent character (Molnar 2010; Nagel, Dietz,
and Broadbent 2010). This is essential if adaptation efforts are to be focused
on agriculture, an eminently social activity expressing the structural changes
driven by an extractive agricultural paradigm that is guilty of contributing at
least 13% of the global emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide,
methane, and nitrous oxide (IPCC 2007). Consequently, if analyses of socio-
cultural dimension of climate change remain ignored or are marginally
addressed, it is likely that technological and productive proposals for agri-
cultural adaptation will fail because they do not involve the issues of concern
to individuals or communities (Adger et al. 2013)

2. Agriculture adaptation to climate change: theoretical approaches

through culture
According to the scientific literature reviewed, the theoretical approaches
identified in the study of agriculture adaptation to climate change from a
sociocultural perspective provide further understanding of the use of a
number of concepts produced by a literature review, but that they are not
part of a cultural theory in particular, and to a lesser extent, on the use of
midrange and high rank theories.1 One of the first concepts was perception2
and its relation with adaptation processes (Bunce, Rosendo, and Brown 2010;
Nielsen and Reenberg 2010; Silva, Eriksen, and Ombre 2010; West, Roncoli,
and Ouattara 2008). Additional investigations carried out in the Himalayas
and Southeast Asia were focused on the understanding of perception accord-
ing to cultural context and how this influences the process of adapting
agriculture to climate change (Esham and Garforth 2013; Habiba, Shaw,
and Takeuchi 2012; Jones and Boyd 2011; Pandey and Bardsley 2013).
In Mexico, Sánchez-Cortés and Lazos-Chavero (2011) examined the per-
ceptions of the indigenous Zoque on changes in climate variability linked to
agriculture and annual weather patterns and how this situation has intro-
duced changes in their agricultural practices as a result of their individual
and collective cultural experience. In Oceania, West, Roncoli, and Ouattara
(2008) and Leonard et al. (2013) showed that traditional knowledge3 plays a
critical role in the understanding of climate change at the individual and
community levels, although it is considered as accumulated knowledge.
Pandey and Bardsley (2013) state that agreement exists between climatolo-
gical knowledge and climate perception by a population; between scientific
and traditional knowledge. Smith and Oelbermann (2010) showed that
members of a community in Costa Rica similarly observed changes in local
 AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS 853

weather conditions that took place one decade before, as well as in distribu-
tion patterns of vegetation and wildlife. They concluded that the inhabitants
of the study area had a good understanding of climate change and its
potential impacts on agricultural production. Raymond and Spoehr (2013)
concluded that the terms used to describe climate change from scientific and
political discourses, led to variations in adaptive responses and levels of
skepticism in agricultural communities in Australia.
Kuruppu (2009), Rogers, Curtis, and Mazur (2012), and Wolf, Allice, and
Bell (2013) showed that personal values and the manner of perceiving the
world (worldviews) are the factors most associated with adaptive behavior to
climate change. The personal values considered by Wolf, Allice, and Bell
(2013) in their Canadian study were tradition, freedom, harmony, security,
and unity. In a study of producers in the state of Nevada (USA), Safi, Smith,
and Liu (2012) found that gender, ideology, and belief in the anthropogenic
origin of climate change, together with observed impacts, influence the
manner by which individuals perceive the effects from climate change and
how they respond to them.
A novel focus in this sense is the use of place identity and place attachment
concepts,4 useful in understanding the social significance that people give to
local landscapes according to their life experiences. Similarly, Grould et al.
(2014) mentioned that local landscapes could be considered as a social platform
to experiment with responses to climate change impacts, through sets of values
that eventually define the vulnerability of one community when facing this
phenomenon. In Bolivia, McDowell and Hess (2012) identified multiple stres-
sors affecting the design and implementation of adaptation strategies to climate
change at the local level, stressors such as land shortages, high costs of the
resources required for adaptation, including natural capital (land and water),
human capital (work related costs), and financial, physical, and social capital.
In Tuvalu, McCubbin, Smit, and Pearce (2015) found that economic
aspects, food, water supply and overpopulation limit the adaptation process
over the long term. In a semiarid rural area of Arizona (USA), Coles and
Scott (2009) identified multiple sources of producer vulnerability, the most
important being the uncertainty associated with seasonal production and
trends in market conditions that diminish the utility of a weather informa-
tion system in making decisions about the effects of climate change. Silva,
Eriksen, and Ombre (2010) addressed this relationship using the concept of
“double exposure,” originally proposed by O’Brien and Leichenko (2000),
which expresses the relationship of mutual exacerbation existing between two
global phenomena (climate change and economic globalization) and their
local effects. Brondizio and Moran (2008) studied the relationship between
climate change perception and memory. After three years of severe drought
in Brazil, only 40% of the producers interviewed remembered it, thus,
854 L. CASANOVA-PÉREZ ET AL.

highlighting the need to consider how climate information is generated and

distributed at the local level, especially with regard to agricultural producers.
Concerning the use of high rank and mid-range theories, Vanclay and
Enticott (2011) used script theory in their research, conceptualizing script as
a cultural expression, a learned or socially conditioned mental map to
differentiate producers, technicians, or decision makers. In other words, a
way of thinking and acting socially that is expected at some point to provide
insight into the weather that individuals cannot perceive or to provide certain
options for adaptation. Petheram et al. (2010) used the theory of constructi-
vism to argue that people construct knowledge and meaning from their social
interactions and experiences. The results obtained under this theoretical
perspective argue that although people perceive “unusual changes in cli-
mate,” their primary concerns are related to their poverty.
Smith, Anderson, and Moore (2012) used the mid-range theory of resilience
to better understand how a system can absorb the effects of a disturbance and
still maintain its structure and function; through auto-organization, we con-
struct and increase our learning and adaptive capacities. The authors conclude
that the resilience of foresters in the southwestern Appalachians (USA) is
influenced by social networks and sociopsychological dependence, which affects
the adaptive capacity to climatic changes. As well, Becken, Lama, and Espiner
(2013) discuss research on the theory of constructivism, suggesting that risk
perception is socially constructed and influenced by values, beliefs, social roles,
and cultural and demographic practices. Calderon (2010) used the theory of
autopoietic social systems, a systemic and functional character theory where
agriculture is conceptualized as a communications system subjected to structural
implications due to its interaction with other systems, their social environment
(especially the economic system), and structural adjustments caused by infor-
mation about what happens in their natural environment (climate change).
Calderon (2010) and Becken, Lama, and Espiner (2013) show that climate
change is not the main driver of agroecosystem transformation, but the change
is instead driven by pressures of a globalized economy and vulnerability caused
by poverty in the region due to structural causes.
The methodological approach used in each of these investigations was oriented
according to a set of concepts generated by a literature review, or by a theoretical
perspective chosen by the researchers: resilience theory, script theory, constructi-
vist theory, and the theory of autopoietic social systems. Although some research-
ers have used these pivotal concepts in their publications, as well as in their
arguments underlying the study of culture, it is not the case for all, such as a
recurring concept, explicit and/or central in their approaches. Petheram et al.
(2010), Smith, Anderson, and Moore (2012) and Jones (2013) are unique, because
they consider culture as a barrier to economic, social, institutional and political
character, similar to economic, social, institutional, and political factors.
 AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS 855

The result of this review is that the scientific literature about the socio-
cultural dimension in agriculture adaptation to climate change does not men-
tion the arguments of classic theories about culture proposed by Tylor, Boas,
Malinowski, Mannheim, Parsons, or Sorokin, nor ideas from contemporary
theories of Geertz, Schneider, Clifford, Rosaldo, Hall, and Larraín (Mascareño
2007). Also, the sociocultural dimension has been used as an alternative
concept without implying culture as a central concept. As for the theories
used in the study of sociocultural dimension in the adaptation of agriculture to
the effects of climate change, we believe that the theory of autopoietic social
systems is the most robust because it allows for the study of agricultural society
as a society and not as the sum of actions for a group of individuals. While
script, constructivism, and resilience theories identified in this literature review
are based on action theory, the theory of autopoietic social systems is based on
communication theory (Luhmann 2006).
It is important to note that agriculture was not always a concept in the
keyword list of the papers reviewed. The reference to this activity was present
mainly in local studies, where agriculture plays an important role expressing
the relationship between society and nature. Based on the present review, the
“agroecosystem” was a little-used conceptual model to represent agricultural
reality. Pandey and Bardsley (2013) are an exception to its use in studying the
impact of adaptation strategies to climate change in two locations in Nepal.
This is due to the interdisciplinary nature of the researchers and their work
and the role that agriculture played in their investigation. Based on this
review, the interpretation of reality, in this case the processes of agriculture
adaptation to climate change, varies according to the theoretical approach
and/or pivotal concepts used, leading to the construction of different mean-
ings of what culture is and its role in the processes of adaptation.

3. Autopoietic social systems theory: major contributions in the

process of agriculture adaptation to climate change
The theory of autopoietic social systems is a senior structuralist–functional
theory. One of its key aspects is that of autopoiesis, a concept proposed by
Humberto Maturana to define the organization of living organisms, and states
that each cell is the product of a grid of internal system operations, which is itself
an element. Luhmann uses it as a core part of his theory of autopoietic social
systems (reworked on the sociological level) to explain how the psyche and social
systems operate. Luhmann suggests that social communication systems are
based on communicative operations that reproduce based on other commu-
nicative operations, thus permitting the system to evolve. Psychic systems,
whose thoughts are reproduced based on other thoughts, and which are impos-
sible to transfer into another consciousness without communication is real, and
these psychic systems are in the system environment (Luhmann 1996, 2006).
856 L. CASANOVA-PÉREZ ET AL.

For Luhmann, communication is a genuinely social operation, assuming the

participation of psychic systems is the initial condition, yet it will not subse-
quently be attributed to any psychic system in particular and is autopoietic to
the extent that it can be produced only in a context recursive with other
communications. Thus, Luhmann proposes autopoiesis as a central concept
allowing one to argue that true communication is social communication and
the communication system called society (and its partial systems: economy,
science, politics, law, agriculture) is able to produce and reproduce its com-
munication operations, thus permitting its evolution (Luhmann 1996, 2006).
From this theoretical and conceptual architecture, the agroecosystem
becomes a conceptual model representing agricultural reality, the psychic system
(producer) is the recipient of the autopoiesis of the agricultural system, so that
information provided through mass media (radio, television, press, Internet),
symbolic means of generalization (money), and systems of interaction (conver-
sations held between two or more producers, producers and technicians, pro-
ducers, and institutional representatives) provide them with new and valuable
information that is used as a reference in the decisions regarding the manage-
ment of their agroecosystems. Over time, this selected and updated information
is integrated into social memory or culture (sets of issues that are regularly
communicated in a local context), and consisting of memories and expectations
that provide possibilities for the psychic system to integrate with when it is faced
with unexpected situations (Casanova-Pérez et al. 2015).
As well, agriculture is a system of partial communication subject to
structural effects from its interaction with other systems in its social envir-
onment (political science, law, and especially the economic system) and
structural adjustments resulting from information on actions in its natural
environment. Structural effects happen upon entering the agriculture infor-
mation system where trends in prices of inputs and agricultural products can
decrease or increase payment for crop harvest by intermediaries in agricul-
tural production. Structural adjustments happen when natural phenomena
generate enough noise to become information, which usually happens in the
presence of catastrophic natural events such as acute droughts, hurricanes, or
floods. Both types of information are introduced to the communication
system using the mass media, symbolically generalized media, and informa-
tion generated by interaction systems (presentations on a specific issue
regarding agricultural endeavor, such as low prices of corn, or effects of
prolonged drought). This information is communicated and understood by
producers in the continuum of agricultural reality in a gradual or abrupt
transformation of management practices in agroecosystems by producers
(Casanova-Pérez et al. 2015). Expression of this transformation is, for exam-
ple, the replacement of native corn with improved varieties, or increased use
of agrochemicals. Both practices are part of a strategy for the harvest to meet
the expectations in quantity and quality demanded by the market. In
 AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS 857

contrast, there is loss of traditional practices such as the use of family labor,
mutual aid among producers, and work paid in kind, practices based on
cooperation with a basis in social trust (Luhmann 1996). Such situations
increase the vulnerability of producers to effects from climate change and the
possibilities for adaptation.
The use of theory of autopoietic social systems is key to addressing contem-
porary agriculture, an activity that is currently characterized by the convergence of
processes occurring at different spatiotemporal scales, but with local effects. When
the agronomic approach is exceeded, studies of what happens in agroecosystems
are imperative. To do so, researchers must understand the behavior therein,
processes such as market economy, the implementation of policies, the repealing
and/or creation of laws, the impact of scientific discoveries and technological
developments, as well as the effects of environmental phenomena such as climate
change, all mediated through culture. This brief review expresses the degree of
agricultural complexity and the need for robust conceptual theoretical approaches
that allow for research to go beyond the study of a component series of agroeco-
systems and focus on their interdependencies, and understanding the system in its
entirety, which recognizes the less explored sociocultural dimension.
The theory of autopoietic social systems is useful in addressing issues such as
climate change and its impact on agriculture, because it has no political–
administrative boundary, and its study involves understanding the role of
economics, power, politics and culture. However, the use of this theory requires
employing those who will carry out such scientific work (agronomists, ecolo-
gists, biologists). It is true that this theory has a higher degree of abstraction but
with the benefit of having cognitive tools that allow for an understanding
between society and nature, global and local, spatial and temporal. Thus,
from this theory, agriculture can be studied as a complex system with hetero-
geneous and interdefinable elements, with the necessary condition of inter- and
transdisciplinary work (Alvarez-Salas, Polanco-Echeverry, and Ríos-Osorio
2014; Casanova-Pérez et al. 2015). It should also be mentioned that this theory
has an important limitation, that it should not dwell on the relations of political
and economic power which underlie societal aspects of climate change, as could
be done from a Marxist theoretical perspective.

4. Conclusions
Agriculture is an activity mediated by culture, a dimension which has been
identified as marginal in research on the impacts of climate change on agricul-
ture and adaptation processes. The study of this dimension would allow for the
understanding of producer motivations to take actions in this regard, a situation
underlying issues such as the system of values, worldview, gender, identity,
manner of perceiving climate change, as well as understanding local contexts
of communication on this climate phenomenon. Researchers in this sense,
858 L. CASANOVA-PÉREZ ET AL.

require the use of conceptual theoretical approaches such as cognitive tools for
analysis and understanding. However, it is necessary that they recognize their
contributions and limits and how they are partial representations of reality,
including their respective paradigmatic biases that should always be evidenced.
This is very important, especially when research results are used as a reference
for decision-makers whose functions are oriented to design and implementation
processes for adapting agriculture to climate change; a global phenomenon
having different local effects that, in the case of agriculture, impact food produc-
tion and other societal needs over the medium and long term.
We propose the theory of autopoietic social systems as a robust conceptual
theoretical architecture for the study of the cultural dimensions of the impact
of climate change on agriculture, as their systemic and functional character-
istics are useful for explaining the origin of climate change and its negative
effects on contemporary agriculture as a result of situations produced in the
same society, especially in the economic system of which it is part. In
addition, the theory allows us to understand culture as the expression of
the social construction of the agricultural communication system, whose
reproduction involves economic, political, legal, scientific–technological,
and natural environmental conditions (the effects of drought, hurricanes,
floods, and other events related to climate change). The knowledge generated
from this theoretical perspective is critical to understanding the responses of
agricultural societies to climate change and to inform the design of adapta-
tion strategies over the medium and long term.

Notes
1. Luhmann (1995) mentions that midrange rank theories, according to Robert K.
Merton, are appropriate for the accumulation of empirically validated knowledge in
specific areas and with reduced social influence. High rank theories are those with
universal claims, those able to address the social phenomenon as a whole (Luhmann
2006).
2. West, Roncoli, and Ouattara (2008), Bunce, Rosendo, and Brown 2010), Nielsen and
Reenberg (2010), Jones and Boyd (2011), Habiba, Shaw, and Takeuchi (2012), and
Esham and Garforth (2013) in their manuscripts do not define the concept of percep-
tion. Pandey and Bardsley (2013) refer only to perception as a process dependent on
the memory of respondents.
3. The concept of traditional knowledge as used by Leonard et al. (2013) is knowledge of
the environment that is derived from experience and traditions particular to a specific
group of people. West, Roncoli, and Ouattara (2008) mention this concept in their
argument, but do not define it.
4. Grould et al. (2014) define place identity as use of the physical environment to
maintain a person’s self-concept through the promotion of self-efficacy, the exploration
of past memories, and the expression of preferences and place attachment as the
emotional bond between a person and a place.
 AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS 859

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