Climate Boundaries: Linking Emotional Dimensions of the Relational Foundations of Solidarity to Civil Sphere Theory

In this paper, we ask how solidarities and symbolic boundaries are formed and articulated in the context of the climate crisis in four European societies: Austria, Slovakia, Norway, and Spain. As a theoretical contribution, we combine a Durkheimian and a Bourdieusian approach to symbolic boundaries and argue that a feminist sociology of emotions perspective provides novel and timely impulses to understand constructions of “us” and “them” and resources of solidarity in the climate crisis. We define climate boundaries as the boundaries individuals draw by evaluating people and social groups to make sense of everyday attitudes and behaviors related to the climate crisis. The sociology of emotions perspective helps us better understand how individuals make sense of climate issues through their embeddedness in everyday social relationships, and how they perceive matters of justice, inequality, and solidarity around climate as integral to these everyday constellations.

Based on empirical observations of climate boundaries as micro-foundations of social solidarity, we ask how these meaning-making resources employ narratives from larger public debates that enact and generalize particular visions of solidarity, civility, and justice within the climate crisis, in each of our four cases. By linking the findings from our interviews with broader meanings that circulate in the public, we show that climate boundaries are a key element of civil sphere contestations. The empirical core of our project are 30 interviews on climate boundaries and solidarities with individuals with different class backgrounds respectively in Austria, Slovakia, Spain and Norway (120 interviews) as well as a comparative look at findings from public opinion surveys on climate as well as relevant public debates. We will devote special attention to the case of Austria in our presentation.

The paper is part of the Horizon Europe project CIDAPE – Climate, Inequality, and Democratic Action: The Force of Political Emotions (2024-2027).