Powerless,Stupefied, and Repressed Actors Cannot Challenge Climate Change: Real Helplessness as a Barrier Between Environmental Concern and Action |
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Authors: | Ryan Gunderson |
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Affiliation: | Department of Sociology and Gerontology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA |
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Abstract: | There is a gap between concern about environmental degradation such as climate change and effective action taken against the forces that drive degradation. This paper argues that real helplessness, a social condition producing powerless, stupefied, and repressed actors, is a fortified barrier between climate concern and effective climate action. Political-economic analysis has theoretical and methodological implications for environmental social science and helps explain a current conundrum in critical sociology: Why are alternatives to a system that drives climate change and other catastrophic risks still seen as unrealistic? We suffer from a political-economic system impervious to transformation before we suffer from a lack of alternative ideas. |
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Keywords: | Adorno Althusser climate inaction culture industry environmental values ideology learned helplessness Lukács pro-environmental behavior repressive state apparatus |
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