The Social Construction of Sustainable Reality by Cultural Engagement with Climate Change

Climate Cultures in Europe and North America: New Formations of Environmental Knowledge and Action Edited by Thorsten Heimann, Jamie Sommer, Margarethe Kusenbach and Grabriela Christmann (Routledge, 2024). The concept of Climate Cultures is a promising contribution by the social sciences to the debate on climate change which, to this day, is still dominated by the natural sciences. Derived from an approach called Social Constructivism in the German-speaking world (better known as Social Constructionism in the Anglo-American context), the concept aims at understanding how specific perceptions and conceptions of climate change each shape cultural communities. The volume Climate Cultures in Europe and North America, edited by Thorsten Heimann, Jamie Sommer, Margarethe Kusenbach, and Gabriela Christmann, sets out to explore the emergence of distinct climate cultures out of the meaning and activities that constitute them, and to ask how they relate to place and space, to inter- and intra-cultural conflicts, and finally, which impacts they might have on different actors and the environment itself. The interest behind these questions is the very timely sociological question: Can the way we engage culturally with climate (change) shape actual environmental outcomes and realities? The volume refers to the editors' previous work, which defines “climate cultures” as “collectively shared perceptions regarding climate change, combined with related social practices”. It, thus, implicitly starts from the basic insight of the interpretive paradigm that it is not the situation itself but its definition that makes phenomena like climate change real and leads people to act accordingly. Climate cultures, therefore, do not have a predictable pattern of action, but rather refer to their respective knowledge base. Consequently, climate cultures are contingent, and constantly reshaped through practice. Moreover, climate cultures are not confined within borders but related to local contexts. In certain cases, they may exhibit variations specific to particular geographic or sociopolitical boundaries, i.e., the lines that divide climate cultures “are simultaneously cultural and political,” as Michael Haedicke argues in his chapter (p. 159). A brief definition of the concept and a rationale for choosing North America and Europe as sites of concern provided by the editors, is followed by two contextualizing chapters. In chapter 1 “Climate Cultures,” Harald Welzer, Hans–Georg Soffner, and Dana Giesecke emphasize the critical need for climate-related research in the social sciences and humanities. Originally published in 2010, the authors state that the sheer impact of the climate crisis on our future social and cultural life has “not been assessed at all” (p. 17) resulting in an utter failure from the general public to react accordingly. What this outlook succeeds in doing is to portray climate change as an epochal first, leaving the reader excited to participate in an uncharted analysis. It is also interesting to consider why humanities, culture and social sciences have largely left the topic unexamined. It appears to be due to the trauma of the fall of the Berlin Wall and their failure to predict or explain it, but the authors blame also their (our) own (cultural) disciplines for distancing themselves from the empirical world and its social problems. In chapter 2 “Excavating Transatlantic Climates,” Lawrence Culver and Doris McGonagill provide a comparative historical analysis of early environmental and climate change discourses in Europe and the United States. This contextualization reminds the reader of the deep historic traces from which climate cultures emerge. In describing the beginning of the transatlantic dialogue with the westward expansion of the newly colonized United States, the chapter puts emphasis on figures like Humboldt as pioneers in ecological awareness, and thus refers (only) to “modern environmental imagination” (p. 29). What follows are seven studies, four in Europe and three in North America, that use the concept of climate culture to examine particular social practices and geographic regions in relation to climate change. However, the concept does not simply aim at the relationship between cultural practices and climate in general. At least in the context of this volume, it appears to specifically focus on the cultural practices related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. This is why the terms climate crisis culture or “climate adaptation culture” as Michael Haedicke (p. 146) puts it, could have been more suitable. The seven studies aim to showcase the complex entanglement of space, practices, and knowledge in the broad understanding of certainties and meanings that constitute climate cultures, offering a variety of perspectives and settings. The chapters approach the concept of climate culture from different angles, encompassing a continuum from specific societal circumstances to actual practices. Each dealing with its own empirical subject, research methods (among others interviews, discourse analysis, climate ethnography etc.) and additional theoretical approaches (like Political Economy of Environment or Theory of Vulnerable Institutions), all chapters address the following three dimensions: (1) the emergence of climate cultures, (2) the participants and elements involved, and (3) their spatial context. (1) Each chapter offers a unique perspective on how and through what means climate cultures emerge. Sarah Kessler and Henrike Rau (Chapter 3), focusing on Climate Change Debates in Germany, suggest that climate cultures emerge through shared cognitive, normative, and practical frameworks of climate change, shaped by everyday discourse and media influences, considering common problem interpretations and values. Miriam Schad and Bernd Sommer (Chapter 4), also focusing on Germany, highlight sustainable practices by change agents that are carried out not necessarily for sustainability reasons but still contribute to the formation of climate cultures. In chapter 5, Pilar Morales-Giner sheds light on “fractured climate Cultures in depopulated Southern Spain.” According to her, collectively shared knowledge about climate vulnerability (including perceptions of climate change) and resilience (including spatial references and supported by “relational cultural spaces,” as conceptualized by Heimann) is crucial for the emergence of climate cultures. Among the Reindeer Saami communities in Finland (chapter 6 by Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi, Suvi Juntunen, and Jouni J. K. Jaakkola), climate cultures emerge through different work models and knowledge systems by herders who attempt to select appropriate adaptation measures based on their systematic observations of climate changes and theorizing of their causal relationships, involving hypotheses about the relation between climate change, landscape, flora, and fauna. One type of climate cultures in the United States (chapter 7 by David Zeller) is seen to emerge through frame resonance practices within environmental movement organizations, particularly in response to geoengineering proposals. Following Michael A. Haedicke in chapter 8, a key factor in the formation of climate cultures is the discursive construction of group knowledge about climate risks and resilience. His case study about “Contested Climate Cultures” in Southeastern Louisiana put emphasis on place-based struggles, in which differently influential groups seek to assert their interests and goals in the climate adaptation process of coastal regions in the southern USA. Julia Teebken (Chapter 9), finally, examines how an active engagement with an adverse climate cultural environment, such as widespread and politically motivated climate skepticism in Georgia, forms climate cultures in terms of coping strategies particularly on a knowledge and communication level. Regarding communication, one practicable solution is addressing climate change not directly but in combination with already established and positively valued narratives like economic growth or conservatism. These various perspectives underscore the complexity and multifaceted nature of how climate cultures come into being, shaped by a diverse array of actors, stocks of knowledge, and social practices and discourses. (2) Closely related to how they emerge is the question of what or who in the end constitutes these climate cultures. Focusing on social media discourse in Germany, chapter 3 describes various societal segments distinguished by their differing attitudes toward responsibility and effectiveness in addressing climate change. Chapter 4 focuses on a specific type of actor, namely change agents in Germany who, through their knowledge and attitudes toward environmental issues, shape local engagement in sustainability initiatives and act as multipliers in neighborhoods, thereby contributing to the formation of climate cultures. Chapter 5 on Southern Spain highlights actors with shared knowledge that forms around so-called shadow landscapes. Chapter 6 characterizes the reindeer-herding Sámi communities in Finland by a shared landscape memory as part of a specific climate culture. The environmental movement organizations in the United States, investigated in chapter 7, are clustered into diverse climate cultures concerning their stance in the debates about the necessity and impacts of geoengineering. In chapter 8 on coastal areas in the United States, climate cultures consist either of the supporters or the opponents of the Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast, including environmentalists, state planners, and business leaders in southeastern Louisiana. And finally chapter 9 addresses politicians and NGOs with their strategies to strengthen measures for climate change adaptation and mitigation within Georgia's climate-skeptic political environment. These different definitions illustrate the complexity and multifaceted nature of climate cultures and the ways in which different actors contribute to their respective perceptions and actions. While this certainly opens up a wide range of applications for the concept, it leaves us with the question of what climate cultures are not. (3) Regarding the spatial context, the volume explores several questions: Is space not just space? How can different climate cultures spread within the same space? How do different perceptions and attitudes toward climate change arise? The contributors identify several dimensions influencing these variations, including narratives, historical contexts, socio-political structures, and local practices. While space is a relevant dimension, it is not the only one. It is not a sufficient explanatory variable on its own, but it is a necessary one. The volume emphasizes, thus, that understanding climate cultures requires a comprehensive approach that considers both spatial and non-spatial factors to fully grasp the variations in how different groups perceive and respond to climate change. All chapters provide empirical evidence that climate change at the same time is both “uninterpreted cultural change” (p. 17) and “interpreted change” (p. 21) as Welzer et al. state in chapter 1 by urging “to ask questions about a historically grounded critique of technology; about economic and environmental history; about the origins of material, institutional, and mental infrastructures; about interests, agendas, and strategies; about social dynamics and unintended consequences of action; about path dependencies, cultural obligations, collective thinking, and so on” (p. 23). In various ways, all the chapters reformulate the research subject of climate change into that of climate culture, giving priority to a constructionist view over approaches that tend to limit the scope of the problem to the level of either political or individual responsibility. According to the editors, Europe and North America were picked for this analysis because of their global power and historical culpability in the crisis. A second rationale might be that the editors had more established networks and better access to relevant contributions there. Taking the two key concepts of “climate cultures” and “relational cultural spaces” seriously might require a meta-analysis of which parts of the picture are tied to one side of the Atlantic and which are interchangeable. Additionally, it would be highly beneficial to read more about collective efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change that arise in one location but are transferable to comparable settings worldwide. From the perspective of bio-cultural heritage, historical contextualization beyond Humboldt is of most relevance to understanding the evolution of modern climate cultures, particularly since many contemporary climate practices and movements draw on indigenous knowledge and heritage to combat climate change effectively. Michaela Pfadenhauer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Vienna, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Head of the working area “Culture and Knowledge.” Her research interests are Communicative AI (ComAI), Mediatization and Knowledge Cultures in a socio-historical and transatlantic perspective. Corina Schwarz is a Bachelor student of sociology at the University of Vienna, focusing on the areas of inequality and climate change. She holds a master's degree in physics and energy engineering and works as an engineer, integrating both natural and social science perspectives in her academic work. Patrick Baú is a Master student of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences. His research interests are the Sociology of Literature and Knowledge Cultures.