5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The planetary socio-ecological crisis and the multidimensional conflict that accompanies it is one of the strongest and most relevant vectors of emotions and sensibilities of the present. At the same time, this field of human emotions and sensibilities is becoming more and more politically relevant when it comes to facing the drastic transformations of the present; not only of the terrestrial biosphere, but also of human and more than human coexistence. As a whole, it brings together a wide range of studies that seek to investigate and account for the irreducible heterogeneity and pronounced contrasts of politically emergent emotionalities and sensibilities of the capitalocenic crisis. In particular, the works that converged in this session are particularly interested in dissociating themselves from the colonial traces that have usually tinged early treatments of ‘eco-emotions’, generally centred on the emotionalities of young people in post-industrial societies distressed by the geological legacies of their own countries of origin's own eco-political trajectory. Alongside comparative and critical reviews of notions such as eco-anxiety, solastalgia, eco-depression, and new forms of zoophilia and/or trans-speciesist sensibilities, experiences, cases, and processes marked by environmental suffering are also explored. These include forms of pain and love, hope and despair, indignation, rage, fear, and courage, as well as the sensations of powerlessness/resignation and transformative power/conviction that arise in the catastrophe scenarios and sacrifice zones of the global South.