Beyond Technical Fixes: climate solutions and the great derangement

TLDR

Climate change research is at an impasse, as urgent transformations of economies and everyday practices confront entrenched material and social‑political infrastructures, and current research struggles to move beyond established categories. The paper aims to generate a different framing of socionatural change beyond the current science‑policy‑behavioural pathway by revisiting social‑science and humanities insights on the co‑production of political economies, cultures, societies, and biophysical relations, and exploring ontological pluralism. The authors place values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, confronting climate change with contested politics and everyday foundations of action rather than just data. It identifies several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that arise directly from how issues are framed and imagined in current discourses.

Abstract

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.