Where Does Ecotheology Speak? Religious Idiom, Household Authority, and Climate-Risk Communication among Coastal Fishers in Madura

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_16How to use a DOI?

Keywords

climate-risk communication; ecotheology; local ecological knowledge; fishers; Madura

Abstract

Climate-risk communication is often assessed by how effectively official forecasts reach fishing communities. This article shifts attention to the communicative arrangements through which fishers make forecasts actionable and asks where ecotheology enters that process. Drawing on eleven semi-structured interviews with fishers, boat owners, a village official who also fishes, and women in fishing households in Dharma Camplong and Tambaan, Sampang Regency, Madura, the study uses an interpretive approach informed by ethnography of communication (EoC). Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling, while Luhmann’s concepts of ecological communication and risk–danger attribution guide the analysis of communicative pathways, authority, translation, and accounts of loss. The findings show a distributed warning system. Fishers primarily access BMKG weather applications through their mobile phones, then recalibrate it through peer calls, an informal WhatsApp group, local radio communication (ORARI), and the observation of clouds, wind direction, waves, and fishing grounds. The Madurese terms about wind direction such as gendhing, selabung, pheret, and dhejeh do more than preserve local knowledge. They translate uncertainty into practical thresholds for decisions at sea. Women extend this system from the shore by circulating alerts, questioning risky departures, and coordinating with neighbors. Religious idiom complements rather than replaces these forms of judgment. It provides an ethical grammar of ikhtiar that combines prayer, humility before the sea, and the imperative not to force departure when danger is already recognized. The study therefore locates ecotheology not in forecasting itself, but in the communicative ethics through which experiential judgment, household authority, and precaution are brought together in decisions about going to sea.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Megasari Noer Fatanti
AU  - Deny Yudo Wahyudi
AU  - Fairuza Arindra
AU  - Zainal Fatah
AU  - Cahyo Pamungkas
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/06
TI  - Where Does Ecotheology Speak? Religious Idiom, Household Authority, and Climate-Risk Communication among Coastal Fishers in Madura
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication, Digital Ecosystem, and Society (ICODES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 227
EP  - 238
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_16
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_16
ID  - Fatanti2026
ER  -