“With witty prose and ethnographic insight, Crockford shows us how discourse about climate change is mediated by religion—its material histories and theological orientations. But the perspective offered here is not merely descriptive; by providing a ‘record of a dying world,’ A Perturbed System also opens space for new worlds and new knowledges to come into being.”

Evan Berry, Arizona State University

“A Perturbed System excavates deep cultural theologies of climate discourse. Drawing on multiyear fieldwork with Dark Mountain and Extinction Rebellion, Susannah Crockford traces how religious tropes shape what can be said, felt, and done in the face of ecological collapse. Part ethnography, part personal reckoning, this is a compelling contribution to the anthropology of religion and climate change.”

Willis Jenkins, University of Virginia

“Crockford offers a fresh and compelling ethnography of the end of the world—an end both materially unfolding and imaginatively constructed—tracing climate change discourses to enduring religious traditions and religion-like cultural theologies bound up with extractive colonialism. Analytically incisive and intermittently personal, the book is unsparing about climate collapse while sustaining a measured sense of hope.”

Lisa H. Sideris, University of California, Santa Barbara