A political‐economic theory of relevance: Explaining climate change inaction

Abstract

Why have societies failed to effectively respond to climate change? We address the question of climate change inaction by (1) examining how an unambiguously ominous report about climate change (IPCC 2018) was made palatable by news media and (2) explaining why climate change is typically unthematized in everyday life. Drawing on Adorno and Schutz, we develop a political‐economic theory of relevance. The imperative to accumulate capital is not only a social‐structural reality but also shapes why particular facts are regarded as relevant in experience (topical relevance) as well as how relevant material is interpreted (interpretative relevance) and acted toward (motivational relevance). Applying this framework, we (1) argue that media popularizations of the IPCC's dire Global Warming of 1.5°C (2018) are constituted by relevance systems conditioned by a capitalist social context and (2) strengthen Ollinaho's (2016) Schutzian explanation for climate change inaction by examining how productive relations and the culture industry perpetuate climate change irrelevance in everyday life. Schutz's framework helps conceptualize the intricacies of ideology and, when revised with Adorno's sociology, shines new light on an old question: the relations between social conditions and knowledge.

Incomegetting and Environmental Degradation

“…While, until the 1990s the focus of scholarly work was on mitigation efforts [43], adaptive efforts have later gained centrality, possibly as a cue of the impossibility to mitigate climate change. What relevances climate change may have to the average person [9], they are constituted through the discursive sphere of society and may surface as eco-anxiety or social pressure to reduce one's flying, for instance. In Sweden, observers have noted that some people are ashamed of their flying and this shame has actually reduced Swedes flying [44].…”

“…We maintain that a more adequate approach, an essentially "nonideal" account of social activity [4,5], can be found in the work of the Austrian born social theorist Alfred Schütz , whose "pragmatic theory of the life-world" [8] is particularly useful in understanding relevances-what is relevant for people in everyday life [9,10]. We relate Schutz's work to other philosophies, in particular to Theodore Schatzki's practice theory, in an attempt to bring phenomenological insights into how activities of getting income structures contemporary life-worlds beyond those activities themselves, aiming to contribute to the environmental social theory that has begun to focus on work [11][12][13][14].…”

Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change in Context: Toward a Political Economy of Relevance

“…A political‐economic theory of relevance integrates Schutz’s theory of relevance with Adorno’s sociology and critique of phenomenology (see Gunderson et al in press). The goal of the theory is to analyse what Schutz (: 250) called the ‘problem of relevance’ – ‘the question of why these facts and precisely these are selected by thought from the totality of lived experience and regarded as relevant’ – from a perspective that is more attentive to social‐structural conditioning of human consciousness and action.…”

“…We think Schutz’s theory of relevance offers a valuable heuristic for sociologists interested in the human dimensions of environmental problems. For instance, without explicitly drawing on Schutz’s theory of relevance types, Ollinaho () recently developed a Schutzian explanation for climate change inaction, arguing that climate change is experienced as an intellectual problem among citizens of the Global North, a problem that is irrelevant when compared to everyday pragmatic concerns (for assessment, see Gunderson et al in press). Ollinaho () work clearly points to the potential a Schutzian perspective for understanding climate change inaction/views and begins to correct Schutz’s limited perspective, which remains focused on internal, subjective experience (Habermas , p. 112; see Mayrl ; McNall and Johnson ; Habermas , p. 129f).…”

From habitus to pragma: a phenomenological critique of Bourdieu's habitus

“…What may appear as marginal modifications in recipes can cumulatively result in a systematic but covert change in the functioning of an institutional order without involving manifest struggle between actors holding dominant and subordinate positions. In other cases, the preservation of an institutionalized order may depend upon powerful actors preserving subordinate actors’ routine pragmata by actively preventing aspects of reality from entering into view in collective systems of relevance (Gunderson, Stuart, & Houser, ; Zerubavel, ). In neither of these cases does the habitus, where the problem of institutional stability hangs entirely on the maintenance of an accord between habitus and its social environment, provide much insight.…”