Climate Change Activism and Theories of the Background


Jesse Carlson, Acadia University

An important strand of social theories of the background emphasize repressed, unconscious, denied, and unprocessed aspects of social life, including collective and individual traumas, prejudices, desires, and emotions. These subterranean phenomena are often linked to societal failures at the level of collective action. In connection to this failures of collective action theme this paper extends a project that critically engages with theories of climate change activism and collective emotions (e.g., Brulle and Norgaard 2019; Malm 2020, 2021; Smith and Howe 2015). These theories work to explain climate change denial and resistance to action as well as studying and theorizing successful and unsuccessful forms of climate activism. Using a comparative approach to different theories of climate change activism and collective emotions, and taking guidance from influential theories of the relationship between social movements and collective emotions (e.g., Butler 2018, 2021, 2022; Cash 2022; Gould 2010; Kaplan 2008; Staiger et al. 2010), this paper argues that successfully responding to the challenges of climate change requires a variety of projects of ‘working through’ repressed, unconscious, denied and unprocessed aspects of social life. After describing and assessing approaches that deploy distinct theories of the background in their theories of climate activism—the suppression of information (Oreskes and Conway 2011), ontological uncertainty and fear avoidance (Giddens 2015), the necessity of social performance (Smith and Howe 2015), a focus on background practices (Shove 2010), theories of interpellation (Malm 2021; Malm et al. 2021)—the paper concludes by arguing that successful climate change activism requires practices that, in addition to presenting relevant scientific information, addressing background anxieties, and changing background practices while foregrounding successful social performances, do not suppress complex and ambiguous individual and collective emotions. While no moment of social life brings everything into the foreground at once, successful climate action must address the full range of repressed, unmourned, and unacknowledged (cf. Zerubavel 2015) aspects of social life, engaging in the work of mourning (Butler 2004), grieving past, present, and future losses (cf. Cunsolo and Ellis 2018) as a necessary step to transformed collective emotions and an ingredient of meaningful collective action.

This paper will be presented at the following session: