Sociology amid Climate Breakdown: A Call for Systemic Pedagogical Transformation

We teach sociology on a dangerously heating planet. The first half of the 2020s has witnessed extreme heatwaves, devastating floods, catastrophic droughts, agricultural shocks and rampant wildfires: harbingers of a situation that is due to escalate towards the end of the century. In this article, we argue that for sociological education to meet the existential challenge posed by climate breakdown, we must do more than simply add climate to the curriculum. Instead, a fundamental rethink of the discipline’s epistemes, theories and canon is urgently needed, with far-reaching pedagogical implications. We suggest that sociology requires an epistemic transformation towards a pluriverse of ecocentrisms, a planetary and decolonial reckoning of social theory and a reappraisal of sociology’s canon. We conclude with a range of low-threshold first steps those teaching sociology can take towards ecologising sociology for the era of climate breakdown.