Abstract

Although the environmental crisis is one of the main causes for today's anxiety, there is no agreement regarding its social implications; thus, the environment is a vast field of symbolic and material conflict, largely dominated by reductive approaches (technical and/or economic), often alien to the social dimension of environmental issues. On the other hand, most social movements, as well as a growing number of 'experts', already express an interpretation of environmental crisis as the consequence of a global social crisis. Environmentalism does not relate merely to the 'urgency' and technical solutions; nowadays, there is also a popular environmentalism, movements for environmental justice both in the North and the South, and a vague perception of unity between environmental and social inequalities. This perception, as well as the scientific consensus about global climate changes, is one of the major novelties of our time.

This launching session intends to pave the way to a wide debate about these issues, as well as presenting the scientific program and schedule of activities for 2011 Environment and Society Workshop.


Goal

The Environment and Society Workshop is a new joint initiative of CES Research Groups, with the goal of addressing the need to design new theoretical, methodological and epistemological tools to analyse the social and environmental crisis as two sides of the same reality. The Workshop will result from a collective effort of analysis and intervention about the connections between the social and environmental dimensions; the working method will be the exchange of research experiences and theoretical guidelines, attempting to provide a point of union for all CES colleagues and students interested in further deepening this approach.