Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: We teach sociology on a dangerously heating planet. The first half of the 2020s has witnessed extreme heatwaves, devastating floods, catastrophic droughts, agricultural shocks and rampant wildfires: harbingers of a situation that is due to escalate towards the end of the century. In this article, we argue that for sociological education to meet the existential challenge posed by climate breakdown, we must do more than simply add climate to the curriculum. Instead, a fundamental rethink of the discipline’s epistemes, theories and canon is urgently needed, with far-reaching pedagogical implications. We suggest that sociology requires an epistemic transformation towards a pluriverse of ecocentrisms, a planetary and decolonial reckoning of social theory and a reappraisal of sociology’s canon. We conclude with a range of low-threshold first steps those teaching sociology can take towards ecologising sociology for the era of climate breakdown.
Source: Sociology
Authors: Peter Gardner, Tobias Müller
Institutions: University of York, University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: Leverhulme Trust, Isaac Newton Trust
Award: G7453549507
OpenAlex ID: W4416535693