Short Abstract:

This panel is considering the reasons for human tendency for BAU,such as lack of empathy with sustaining structures or sense of powerlessness.We aim to discuss resignation and indifference amidst life-endangering crises, but balance this with discussions on how to challenge this and push for change.

Long Abstract:

Amidst all the present crises, environmental catastrophe - led by climate change and biodiversity loss - is perhaps the most overwhelming and all-encompassing one, with capacity to destroy much of our normalities and what we value. Although we accept many transformations within our societal sphere, making decisive changes to avoid the enormous risk of collapsing ecosystems seems beyond us. Despite the looming dangers, most carry on business-as-usual (BAU).

This panel would like to explore why. Can we not identify (with) the structures that sustain us, to live differently to protect life? Might it be a lack of empathy towards the non-human - creatures, structures, systems, such as the Earth or the biosphere? Or a sense of lack of power over our own life? We also invite examples of human, but also non-human, ability to undo stagnant or resigned modes of existence, capable of bringing about change right now. What if we took charge and started today to push the systems towards a radical overhaul? What would it take, what do (we think) we lose? What if we, social scientists, instead (or besides) writing about it, relinquished our empathy into our field of study and acted according to the cultural/social critique we express in the printed word?

We invite explorations of empirical evidence and theoretical considerations on the reasons for lack of change, on our own power and desire for change, and discussions on how to overcome our stagnation and lack of care: in practice, in thinking, in writing.

This Panel has so far received 1 paper proposal(s).
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