Emotions in Climate Activism
A Sociocultural Approach from the Global South
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- Description
- Contents
- Reviews
- About
This book contains an Open Access chapter.
While recent social science has been preoccupied with eco-anxiety experienced by non-activists, Emotions in Climate Activism breaks new ground by turning the spotlight on climate activists. In a powerful challenge to Global North-dominated narratives, Gravante and Poma delve into the emotional landscapes of climate activism in Mexico, revealing how anger, hope, fear and pain can both ignite and shape collective mobilisation. What drives people to rise up in defence of the planet, and how do emotions shape the climate movements emerging across the Global South?
Drawing on over six years of immersive research, this book offers a fresh, culturally rooted understanding of climate emotions and their role in galvanising often youth-led movements across the world. The authors shift the focus from individual mental health to the power of shared emotional experience, mapping how collectives and communities construct meaning, resilience and urgency together.
Through comparative insight and vibrant storytelling, Emotions in Climate Activism reveals why the climate crisis isn’t just a scientific or political issue — it’s profoundly emotional. Essential reading for scholars, students and activists alike, this is a bold and timely contribution to our understanding of global environmental action.
Chapter 1. How Do We Study Emotions? OPEN ACCESS
- Chapter 2. Climate Emotions and Activism
- Chapter 3. Protest Emotions in Climate Activism
- Chapter 4. Emotions in Interaction
- Chapter 5. How Can Activists and People Manage Climate Emotions?
- Conclusions
Nothing is more important today than climate change, and nothing is more important to the politics of climate change than widespread emotions about the climate. These intrepid researchers, specialists in the emotions of politics, have done us all a great service, showing how hope arises from resignation and despair. In troubled times, this is a lesson for anyone involved in protest movements.
Reacting to a sort of pathologization of movement activism, social movement studies have for a long time presented them as “normal” forms of political participation. Yet, as Tommaso Gravante and Alice Poma demonstrate, movement politics is passionate politics, as activists work on their emotions, controlling negative ones, such as fear, and promoting positive ones, such as hope. What is more, state violence and dramatic levels of poverty define a specific affective context in the global South.
Alice Poma is a full-time researcher at the Institute of Social Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (Spanish: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM).
Tommaso Gravante is a full-time researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Sciences and Humanities, National Autonomous University of Mexico (Spanish: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM).