LUCSUS Seminar: Habitus and climate change: Exploring support and resistance to sustainable welfare and social–ecological transformations in Sweden.

Max Koch and Martin Fritz will present their recent paper on habitus and climate change with the following abstract: We explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social–ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position-takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of questions about social, ecological, and climate change related topics and identify eight underlying eco–social dispositions. These are used for cluster analyses that find typical constellations of eco–social dispositions within the Swedish population: variants of eco–social habitus. We find seven habitus types and describe their social characteristics, political preferences, and practices. Finally, the seven habitus are plotted onto the map of social positions, the Bourdieusian social space, highlighting their relations—proximities, tensions, and contestations—to each other. We find evidence that political struggles around social–ecological transformations reproduce existing social structures but are also connected to new “eco–social” divisions that appear between groups in similar positions. In the conclusion we discuss the implications for social–ecological transformations based on sustainable welfare. Read the full paper her.

Bio

Max Koch is a sociologist and professor of social policy at Lund University. His research addresses the ways in which capitalist restructuring is reflected in the social structure, welfare systems, and the environment. Recently, he studied issues of sustainable welfare and degrowth/postgrowth transitions. He is currently PI in the projects "Postgrowth Welfare Systems" and "Sustainable Welfare for a New Generation of Social Policy".

Martin Fritz is a sociologist and currently works in the project 'Mentalities in flux: imaginaries and social structure in modern circular bio-based societies (flumen)' at the Institute of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. His research focuses on environmental and social attitudes and practices, sustainable work and welfare, and degrowth.

Registration

To join the seminar online please sign up here. You will then receive a confirmation email with a zoomlink to the seminar. 

The LUCSUS seminars are open for the public, held online and take place Thursdays from 11am to 12 noon. We are looking forwards to seeing you!

Read more about the LUCSUS seminar serie on LUCSUS website