Weathering unrest
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Author | Adam Yeeles |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343314557508 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Weathering unrest: The ecology of urban
social disturbances in Africa and Asia
Adam Yeeles
School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas
Abstract
Over the last several years research has examined anew the potential for climate change to induce political conflict and
potentiate social unrest. Several explanations for the relationship between weather and social unrest have been pro-
posed, including the idea that temperature, acting through a physiological response mechanism, gives rise to collec-
tive aggression. This proposition first appeared in the aftermath of the 1960s US riots, which occurred primarily in
the heat of summer, and has re-emerged within the contemporary literature on conflict and climate, in addition to
explanations rooted in political economic processes. Building on both bodies of work, this article utilizes a case-
crossover time-series design to explore the relationship between meteorological factors derived from high resolution
spatial data of temperature and precipitation and social disturbances occurring in 50 major cities in Africa and Asia
between 1960 and 2006. Poisson regression and generalized additive modeling are utilized to model linear and non-
linear effects, respectively. A significant, but qualified, association between heat and urban social disturbances is
found. The general relationship is non-linear, with peak levels of unrest occurring in the upper 20s (C). The rela-
tionship between temperature and social unrest within individual cities is linear. In addition, there are differential
effects of heat on lethal versus non-lethal episodes of unrest. The non-linear response to temperature is much more
pronounced among lethal events than it is among non-lethal episodes. The conclusion taken from this research is that
heat is associated with urban social conflict, but generally does not trigger episodes and instead acts to supplement
aggression while other factors govern the primary timing of social unrest.
Keywords
Africa, Asia, political ecology, temperature-aggression, urban social unrest
Introduction
Over the last decade the human consequences of climate
change have received increasing attention in several dis-
ciplines. As it pertains to political unrest, the research has
considered deviations from temperature and precipita-
tion trends as causes of African civil wars (Burke et al.,
2009; Hendrix & Salehyan, 2012; O’Loughlin et al.,
2012). A few studies have examined long cycles of con-
flict and climate in Europe (Tol & Wagner, 2010) and
China (Zhang et al., 2006). Short-term meteorological
effects, including natural disasters (e.g. Nel & Righarts,
2008; Slettebak, 2012), have also been considered. An
earlier corpus of work examines the relationship between
heat and collective violence from a social psychological
perspective – motivated by the tendency for violence
to occur amid the long hot summer (Baron &
Ransberger, 1978; Schwartz, 1968).
1
This work has
focused on episodes of urban-based social unrest in
the United States (e.g. Baron & Ransberger, 1978;
Carlsmith & Anderson, 1979) and on cross-national
variation in temperature and levels of political vio-
lence (e.g. Schwartz, 1968; Van de Vliert et al.,
1999). The idea that climate warming, and by associ-
ation heat and extreme weather, increases the risk of
sociopolitical violence is now commonly used in
1
The primary debate here is whether the relationship between heat
and social unrest is linear (Carlsmith & Anderson, 1979) or
curvilinear (Baron & Ransberger, 1978).
Corresponding author:
adam.yeeles@utdallas.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2015, Vol. 52(2) 158–170
ªThe Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343314557508
jpr.sagepub.com
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