Et nyt klima for sociologien? Om socialteoretiske nybrud i økologiseringens tidsalder

Abstract

De globale klimaforandringers nye epokale bekymringer udfordrer sociologisk vanetænkning og inviterer til forstærket socialteoretisk engagement. Denne artikel søger at give et selektivt overblik over de måder, hvorpå den sociologiske fagdisciplin gør klimaproblematikken til genstand for teoretisk og empirisk forskning; samt at give et programmatisk og fremadrettet bud på dette arbejdes væsentligste socialteoretiske nybrud. Historisk lokaliseres disse spor i miljøsociologien, og artiklen giver et kort oprids af dette sub-felts vigtigste forskningsprogrammer. Hernæst analyseres det, hvordan ”klima” nutidigt mobiliseres som markør for bredere kulturelle transformationer i en række ambitiøse samtidsdiagnostiske projekter. Fokus lægges her på de vidt forskellige, men hver især vidtrækkende, teoriansatser hos Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Slavoj Žižek og Bruno Latour. Mod slutningen af artiklen udpeges fem social-ontologiske akser, langs hvilke klimaforandringerne inviterer til fornyet sociologisk fantasi og fremtidige empiriske studier: Rumlighed (globalitet); tidslighed (fremtidighed); materialitet (økologi); epistemisk grænsedragning (transdisciplinaritet); og offentlighedsformer (klimatisk medborgerskab). Klimaforandringer, konkluderes det håbefuldt, kan vise sig at bidrage ”positivt” til sociologien, som katalysator for en genopfindelse af disciplinen i en kosmopolitan, mere-end-social verden. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Anders Blok: A New Climate for Sociology? On Social-Theo-retical Ventures in the Age of Ecology The epochal concerns of global climate change challenge sociological habits of thought and call for a strengthened social-theoretical engagement. This article seeks to provide a selective overview of how the discipline of sociology turns climate issues into theoretical and empirical research; and it also attempts to offer a programmatic and future-oriented assessment of the main social-theo-retical ruptures conjured in this work. In historical terms, these lines of engagement are located in environmental sociology, and the article provides a brief review of the main research programmes of this sub-field. It then analyzes how ”the climate” is presently deployed as marker of wider cultural transformation in a series of ambitious projects of diagnosing the present. It focuses on the wide-ranging, but extensively different, theoretical assertions of Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Slavoj Žižek and Bruno Latour. In the latter part of the article, five socio-ontological axes are pinpointed, along which climate change invite renewed forms of sociological imagination and future empirical research: spatiality (globality); temporality (futurity); materiality (ecology); epistemic boundary-work (trans-disciplinarity); and public-ness (climatic citizenship). In a hopeful vein, the article concludes that climate change may contribute ”positively” to sociology, by catalyzing the reinvention of the discipline in a cosmopolitan, more-than-social world. Key words: Global climate change, environmental sociology, diagnosis of the present, ecologization, cosmopolitization, social-theoretical ruptures.