Thinkers in Residence: An EBook for Thinking

Thinkers in Residence, a joint project with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work. Actual Thoughts

Environmental Education After Sustainability : Hope in the Midst of Tragedy

In this article, I discuss the challenge posed to environmental education (EE; and education for sustainable development) by the thinkers who see the situation of the world as so severe that ‘sustainability’ is an outdated concept. My approach is interdisciplinary and I discuss especially the connections between EE and eco-psychology. Based on psychological research, I argue that the wide-scale unconscious anxiety, which people experience, should be taken very seriously in EE. My discussion thus contributes in a new kind of way to a long-standing key issue in EE, the gap between people’s values and the perceived action. Scholars of eco-anxiety have argued that instead of not caring, many people in fact care too much, and have to resort to psychological defenses of denial and disavowal. Thus, the question in EE is not anymore whether EE should deal with anxiety, for anxiety is already there. The prevailing attitude in EE writing is right in emphasizing positive matters and empowerment, but the relation between hope and optimism must be carefully thought about and a certain sense of tragedy must be included. Therefore, my article participates in the discussion about the role of ‘fear appeals’ in EE. My discussion is directed to anyone who wants to understand the reasons for inaction and the ways in which these may be overcome.Peer reviewe

Theatre and time ecology: deceleration in Stifters Dinge

This article explores the production of ‘time ecology’ in two works of postdramatic theatre: Heiner Goebbels’ Stifters Dinge (2007) and Philippe Quesne’s L’Effet de Serge (2007). By focusing on the practice of deceleration, it argues that theatre’s ecological potential resides not so much in its ability to represent the world, but rather in its capacity for producing new types of temporal experience that purposefully seek to break with modernity’s regime of historicity and the accelerated rhythms that it has given rise to. Importantly, my concern with deceleration is not an argument for slowness per se; on the contrary, I am interested in highlighting the presence of multiple and interpenetrating timescales and rhythms. As well as exposing the full extent of theatre’s temporal potential, such a concern with postdramatic ‘chronographies’ offers an implicit critique of dramatic theatre’s extant practices of eco-dramaturgy that, all too often, attempt to construct a linear narrative which is invested in conventional sequential models of temporality (beginning, middle, end)

Psychological responses to the proximity of climate change

A frequent suggestion to increase individuals’ willingness to take action on climate change and to support relevant policies is to highlight its proximal consequences. However, previous studies that have tested this proximising approach have not revealed the expected positive effects on individual action and support for addressing climate change. We present three lines of psychological reasoning that provide compelling arguments as to why highlighting proximal impacts of climate change might not be as effective a way to increase individual mitigation and adaptation efforts as is often assumed. Our contextualisation of the proximising approach within established psychological research suggests that, depending on the particular theoretical perspective one takes to this issue, and on specific individual characteristics suggested by these perspectives, proximising can bring about the intended positive effects, can have no (visible) effect, or can even backfire. Thus, the effects of proximising are much more complex than is commonly assumed. Revealing this complexity contributes to a refined theoretical understanding of the role psychological distance plays in the context of climate change and opens up further avenues for future research and for interventions

Subjectivity in a context of environmental change: opening new dialogues in mental health research

In a period of unstable experimentation with challenges of globalization of associated risks, and disenchantment with ‘enduring injustice’, we bring forward a consideration of subjectivity to the study of environmental change and mental health. We begin by identifying how mainstream climate change and mental health studies are unable to explain the emergent and co-evolutionary pathways of agency. As a means of freeing these studies of their objective dimensions of linear-causation, we argue in favour of a re-positioning of subjectivity within an appreciation of recognition conflicts and beyond the over-deterministic interpretations of power centres—state, market or religion. We draw on one example of scientific research that was conducted in a region undergoing strong environmental, social and cultural changes, in the state of São Paulo/Brazil, with the aim to open mental health research to new dialogues, to which we contribute with the notion of the ‘pluriversal subject’

Rethinking plan A for sustainable HCI

This paper challenges the sustainable HCI community to move away from a focus on demand and instead address climate change as a supply problem. We identify a new route to impact, namely addressing the psychological barriers that interfere with political mobilization toward limiting the use of fossil fuels. Five barriers are explored as a means of refocusing research objectives for the community