An Interdisciplinary Approach to Climate Change : Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the ways in which research and perspectives from the social sciences and humanities can be combined for a more effective understanding of climate change and its impacts. Climate change affects all aspects of life, influencing personal lifestyle choices and political perceptions. Beyond legal and political measures, the engagement of individuals and local communities has become essential for necessary systemic change. Understanding the complex human and social dynamics is key to achieving real change, in favour of a resilient and low-carbon future.

This book highlights the theoretical and practical contributions of the social sciences and humanities in understanding how humans perceive and respond to climate change, and the ways in which they can be combined to fight climate disruption and its effects. These interdisciplinary approaches draw upon fields such as communication sciences, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, educational sciences, management studies, and philosophy, to explore the nexus between climate change and human and social dynamics in individual, collective, and political actions.

Drawing on a wide range of interesting case studies, the book highlights opportunities for collaboration between disciplines by combining methodological and theoretical components and synthesizing the research results. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that a more effective collaboration between the social sciences and humanities is required to fully understand the complexities of our relationship with climate change, and to pave the way to a real ecological transition. The book will be of use to scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners interested in communication studies, psychology, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, management, educational studies, transition studies, and connected fields.

Andrea Catellani is Professor of Communication at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). He is one of the directors of the Study and Research Group "Communication, Environment, Science and Society" of the French Society of Information and Communication Sciences (SFSIC). He was the principal investigator of the research project "Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation" (funded by JPI Climate, 2020-2024). He has published several academic articles and books, particularly on environmental and climate communication and rhetoric, corporate social responsibility discourse, the semiotic approach to organizations, ethics in communication, and the relationship between religion and digital communication.

Louise-Amélie Cougnon holds a PhD in sociolinguistics and leads research at MiiL, a technological platform at UCLouvain (Belgium). She specializes in the intelligibility of multimodal data, including social media, archives, and the press. Her expertise has been primarily applied in the fields of climate change and health disorders. She developed a profiling model based on qualitative and quantitative data, structured around values, emotions, practices, and attitudes towards norms (VEPRe). Dr. Cougnon also specializes in data ethics and research ethics.

Øyvind Gjerstad is Associate Professor of French linguistics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Among his main research interests are linguistic polyphony and the narrativity of deliberative discourse. He has participated in several externally funded research projects on the linguistic and societal aspects of climate change, the last of which is the project “Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation”, funded by the Joint Programming Initiative "Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe" (2020-2024).

Armelle Nugier is Assistant Professor of social psychology at Université Clermont Auvergne. She is co-head of the CNRS research team on “Social behaviors and collective dynamics” within the Laboratory of Social and Cognitive Psychology (LAPSCO) in Clermont-Ferrand. Her research focuses on social norms, prejudice, and discrimination. She has published numerous scientific articles and is the author of Les Influences Sociales (second edition) with Peggy Chekroun and of The Social and Political Psychology of Violent Radicalism with Serge Guimond.