230082 FPR Research Practice 1: Climate Everday practices in Austria (2024S)

In the context of this course, students have the opportunity to write a Bachelor's thesis.

The climate crisis is increasingly shaping our everyday life. Its impacts are becoming more and more noticeable, in the form of extraordinary heatwaves, floods, and an intensification of global conflicts. At the same time, societies and states are increasingly responding to these challenges through climate policy, mitigation, and adaptation measures. These measures – such as the insulation of houses, the redesign of cities for new mobility concepts, or the pricing of certain CO2-intensive lifestyles – create new social realities. These require a high degree of democratic legitimacy and participation.

In our research internship, we aim to explore how people in Austria perceive the climate crisis and the societal and political responses to it. We face a dual challenge: On the one hand, we want to trace relevant transformation processes using environmental sociology as well as urban and spatial sociology. This involves examining how people perceive or ignore the climate crisis in their daily lives: To what extent are everyday processes interpreted as climate issues or challenges, and by whom? How and where are these processes socially and spatially located?

Furthermore, we want to apply advanced sociological theories and methods to understand the significance people attribute to these processes. Only by understanding everyday meanings, shared emotions, and their political relevance can we comprehend the strategies people develop and consider legitimate: What do individuals and groups consider the right way to deal with the challenges arising from societal and political diagnoses of the climate crisis? How are strategies communicated publicly? Who is held responsible for which processes, and what implications does this have for democratic action in the everyday climate context in Austria?

In particular, we want to focus on the following approaches and fields:

City, space, and climate transformations
Countryside, rural areas, and climate transformations

Further approaches include:

Emotions in the climate crisis
Perception of social and economic inequality in the climate crisis
Political communication, negotiations of legitimacy, and democratic participation in the climate crisis
Climate activism

The main part of the course consists of the practical research task of sociologically examining an area of everyday climate life. As a guiding example for finding a relevant perspective and research question, we will deal with spatial sociological perspectives and everyday references and perceptions of the climate crisis. Furthermore, to acquire theoretical concepts and methods, we will particularly include approaches from cultural sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of emotions.

Within these fields, students are encouraged to seek and develop their own topics (notwithstanding the possibility of writing a Bachelor's thesis as part of the course).
These topics will be discussed in the course, embedded in the theoretical framework of sociological approaches to perceiving the climate crisis, and students are expected to be able to independently apply the appropriate methods to the area they have selected.
For any questions regarding the course, please contact sylvia@herzog.univie.ac.at