977
Climate Uncertainties. Linking Environmental and Risk Sociologies.
Language: English
Risk plays a central role in the definition of, and the strategies to cope with, Climate Change (CC). In all four general trends Zen (2014) identifies for sociological research on CC – social causes, construction of CC as environmental problem, social inequality linked to CC and, social responses (mitigation/adaptation) – risk, vulnerability and affiliated notions are introduced within arguments about the social processing of CC.
But, as the definitions and evaluations are heavily dependent on geophysical data and models (usually at macro levels) it remains unclear the extent to which this extended usage incorporates sociological debates about the nature of risk and of the diversity of responses apart from mitigation and adaptation (ie acceptance, avoidance, conflict) at different scales (micro, biographical, organizational). Also, the sociological perspective suggest that as new risk understandings and practices emerge framed by CC, novel forms of uncertainty, identities and values can be also expected to emerge.
In trying to foster communication between two major trends of research (environmental and risk sociologies), the session will adopt a broad stance and welcome papers that bridge sociological theories of risk and research on CC.
How universalist values inscribed in expert evaluations are translated into situated notions of risk and uncertainty?
What forms of classification and moral attributions are emerging with CC? (Anthropoce)
What other practices or strategies apart from normative mitigation and adaptation can be envisaged?
How blame is being attributed? To what consecuences?
To what extent different understandings of climate risk, become constitutive of new local/global identies?