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

Climate change represents one of the most important and urgent problems of our time. Among the responses to climate challenges, sustainability transitions are considered very promising, and are therefore considered by a growing number of institutions, organizations, specialists and civil society groups. If the need of transition is widely shared today, its interpretation and implementation vary greatly. On the one hand, the transition can be designed in a holistic perspective, and aim at the multiple aspects of global warming like adaptation, security, health and justice. On the other hand, the transition can be reduced to a simple decarbonization which, although laudable and necessary, is often limited to techno-economic management of carbon flows, which can marginalize behavioral, social or structural changes. Between these two stances, climate change transitions can assume various trends, and so involve different pathways of socio-ecological change.

The goal of this session is to set up an international forum for theoretical and empirical research providing new perspectives and insights on climate change transitions, and to explore their implications in terms of socio-ecological change. Papers that mobilize perspectives in environmental sociology to the investigation of various topics about climate change transitions are solicited. Papers can address the following themes, without being limited to them:

• Theoretical perspectives on climate change transitions
• Governance and planning of climate change transitions
• Urban low-carbon transitions
• Energy transitions
• Transitions in transportation
• Discourses of climate change transitions
• Transitions and climate justice
• Degrowth and climate change transitions