Climate Change and Society

Recommended Prerequisites

Students should ideally be already familiar with current debates within environmental sociology, political sociology and science and technology studies, but it is not mandatory .

Teaching Methods

Classes are both theoretical and practical. During the first part the class relies on the expository method, drawing on relevant literature and on research conducted on the topic. The second part of the class consists of the discussion of key texts for the module, as well as of exercises, developing a process of collective learning that aims at strengthening the envisaged critical and reflexive approach. The learning process demands autonomous work – both individual and collective – that aims to operationalize the scholarship and theoretical debates in a critical and reflexive fashion. 

Learning Outcomes

Main Goal

To allow students to critically reflect on the topic of climate change (CC) and society, resorting to relevant social sciences’ scholarship and debates.

Specific goals

Students should be able to: identify the main theoretical debates on CC and society; mobilize social sciences’ resources to analyze the phenomenon of CC; mobilize the theoretical debates and scholarship of the module to critically analyze specific case studies.

Skills

Students should display the following skills:

Generic: ability to critically reflect on literature on CC and society and to mobilize relevant theoretical resources to analyze a specific case study on the topic.

Specific

Ability to critically analyze the social, political and cultural articulations of CC, including topics such as social movements, energy transition, sociotechnical controversies and biopolitics.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1.Introduction to Climate Change (CC) and society

1.1 Challenges of CC for sociology

1.2 Multiplicity of responses to CC

1.3 Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene

 

2.CC and Social Movements 

2.1 History of the Climate Movement  

2.2 Transition Movement

2.3 School strike for climate

2.5 Extinction Rebellion and Emerging Movements

3. CC and Energy Transition 

3.1 Energy Transition and Carbon Neutrality  

3.2 The Portuguese Case 

3.3 Contradictions of Energy Transition 

3.4 Extractivism and Lithium Mining

 

4. CC and technological futures  

4.4 CC, Technocracy and post-politics 

4.2 The Geoengineering controversy 

4.5 Public Engagement with Geoengineering 

 

5. CC and Biopolitics

5.1 Biopolitics, Environmentalities and Micropolitics 

5.2 Neoliberal Environmentalism

5.3 CC, Lifestyles and spiritualities

 

6. CC, Social Sciences and Methodological Experimentation 

6.1 Non-human agency

6.2 Methodological Challenges of CC

6.3 CC, Social Sciences and art

6.4 Politics for the Anthro.

Head Lecturer(s)

António Manuel Simões Lopes Paiva de Carvalho

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Periodic or by final exam as given in the course information: 100.0%

Bibliography

Carvalho, A., Ferreira, V., & Matos, A. R. (2021). Ontologias do Antropoceno: Crise climática, respostas sociopolíticas e tecnologias emergentes. Forum Sociológico II (38), 5-13.

Carvalho, A., Riquito, M., & Ferreira, V. (2022). Sociotechnical imaginaries of energy transition: The case of the Portuguese Roadmap for Carbon Neutrality 2050. Energy Reports, 8, 2413-2423.

Della Porta, D., & Parks, L. (2014). Framing processes in the climate movement: From climate change to climate justice. Routledge handbook of the climate change movement, 19-30.

Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: Making kin. Environmental humanities, 6(1), 159-165.

Latour, B. (2015), Eighth Lecture - How to govern struggling (natural) territories?. In: Latour, B., Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Polity, pp. 302-344.

Zografos, C., & Robbins, P. (2020). Green sacrifice zones, or why a green new deal cannot ignore the cost shifts of just transitions. One Earth, 3(5).