Translation and the climate emergency: A new sociological imagination

This article puts translation at the centre of an understanding of science, culture and politics and their interrelations in the face of anthropogenic climate change. It argues for an integrated approach to these traditionally separate knowledge domains in the form of a translational sociology that is centred on the politics of translation across languages, disciplines and knowledges, as well as practices of political advocacy and deliberation and policy implementation. A first section introduces the concept of metamorphosis to capture the transformations of the present and delineates its connections to a materialist notion of translation. Then the contours of a translational sociology built around analytically distinct processes of linguistic translation, political translation, policy translation and knowledge translation are specified. After that, these interrelated practices are examined with reference to relevant transnational instances through which the politics, science and culture in relation to the climate emergency are articulated and renewed: the Conference of the Parties (COP), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Covering Climate Now (CCNow). A concluding section argues for the more general significance of a translational approach beyond established academic disciplines in terms of a new sociological imagination.