Keeping the heart a long way from the brain: The emotional labour of climate scientists (original) (raw)

Wright, C. and Nyberg, D. (2012) 'Working with Passion: Emotionology, Corporate Environmentalism and Climate Change', Human Relations 65(12): 1561-87.

In responding to climate change, organisations navigate in an increasingly volatile emotional milieu in which feelings of fear, anxiety, hostility and anger shape public debate. In this article, we explore how corporations have responded to the broader ‘emotionology’ surrounding climate change. Our focus is on the role of corporate sustainability specialists as intermediaries, or ‘emotionology workers’, acting between broader social debates and local organisational contexts. Through analysis of interview and documentary data from major Australian corporations we explore both the activities of these individuals in translating and shaping climate change emotionology within their organisations, as well as how they manage their own emotionality in this work. We find that sustainability professionals are key agents in the design and implementation of a positive emotionology of climate change as a challenge and opportunity for corporate action. However, these activities result in tensions and contradictions for these individuals in reconciling their own emotional engagement with climate change and the negative impact of corporate activities on the environment. Our analysis contributes to an understanding of the roles and activities of ‘emotionology work’, as well as broadening the concept of ‘emotion work’ to include those involved in promoting broader social change in organisational settings.

Working with passion: Emotionology, corporate environmentalism and climate change

Human Relations, 2012

In responding to climate change, organizations navigate in an increasingly volatile emotional milieu in which feelings of fear, anxiety, hostility and anger shape public debate. In this article, we explore how corporations have responded to the broader ‘emotionology’ surrounding climate change. Our focus is on the role of corporate sustainability specialists as intermediaries, or ‘emotionology workers’, acting between broader social debates and local organizational contexts. Through analysis of interview and documentary data from major Australian corporations we explore both the activities of these individuals in translating and shaping climate change emotionology within their organizations, and how they manage their own emotionality in this work. We find that sustainability professionals are key agents in the design and implementation of a positive emotionology of climate change as a challenge and opportunity for corporate action. However, these activities result in tensions and co...

Constructing a story to live by: Ethics, emotions and academic practice in the context of climate change

Emotion, Space and Society, 2012

Starting from the concept of the narrative--self, this paper explores the everyday ethics of research and academic practice as seen through the storied--experiences of two women who have chosen their careers through their desire to contribute meaningfully to the resolution of environmental issues. Selves are embedded in language, in relationships, in societies, in places and in ecologies. However, selves are also co--constructed in dialogue between teller and listener or writer and reader. In the intersubjective space opened up through dialogue lies the potential for change at both personal and societal levels. Enacting a narrative ethics of reading and writing that draws on counselling practices, this paper brings my own affective, embodied story into dialogue with the published memoir of Alison Watt. As we both struggle to find stories we can live by within the contexts of specific academic and research communities we begin to challenge the narratives and discourses that dominate our respective fields of field biology and human geography. The emotional and embodied practice of narrative ethics is offered as one possible response to the overemphasis on technical rationality within our society and its institutions. I argue that the development of practical wisdom (phronesis) is essential to addressing issues such as climate change, which are not simply technical problems but are fundamentally rooted in the human condition.

Between climates of fear and blind optimism: the affective role of emotions for climate (in)action

Geographica Helvetica, 2022

Emotions affect how humans relate to others and define their place in the world. They thus shape responses to socio-ecological problems like climate change. In spite of the overwhelming knowledge and concern about climate change, a lack of appropriate moral and political consequences prevails in most contemporary societies. Instead of trying to explain climate inaction as a result of (un)awareness, this paper introduces a new perspective by conceptualising climate inaction as an active social process animated by emotions. Drawing on an interdisciplinary and radically relational perspective, I grasp climate inaction as a product of more-than-human intra-action and explore the affective role of emotions within this production. To illustrate how emotions energise climate inaction, I sketch how fear, grief, and hope animate current climate responses.

AFFECTIVE PEDAGOGIES: FOREGROUNDING EMOTION IN CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION

Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 2020

This article addresses the psychic and emotional challenges associated with enabling learners to apprehend their role in, and vulnerability to, the evolving climate crisis. Global warming is arguably one of the most cognitively as well as emotionally complex topics for learners or members of the public more generally to engage with. Given the emergent nature of climate change, many educators are unsure about how best to enable citizens to navigate the complex emotions that they experience in response to their proximity to, and responsibility for, a myriad of injustices and environmental catastrophes associated with global warming. Meanwhile, new emotions, including ecological grief and heightened levels of climate-related anxiety amongst young people have been reported in epidemiological studies, our understanding of which is as of yet underdeveloped. This article argues that a psychosocial approach to climate change education (CCE) which emphasises the mutual interaction between psychic and social processes which affect the climate crisis and how we relate to it should comprise part of a broader and sustained public response to the climate crisis, especially in contexts where climate-related anxiety and grief are becoming more widespread. It introduces a conceptual toolkit to inform the psycho-affective aspects of CCE, with a particular emphasis on the pedagogical complexities of engaging learners located in emissions-intensive societies with their role as 'implicated subjects' in the climate crisis (Rothberg, 2019).

‘It helped me sort of face the end of the world’: the role of emotions for third sector climate change engagement initiatives

2015

This paper examines the role that attention to emotions around climate change can play for third sector climate change engagement initiatives, an area to which the literature on such initiatives has paid little attention. It focuses on Carbon Conversations, a programme that explicitly acknowledges the role of difficult emotions and underlying values in people’s engagement with climate change. While there are limitations to this approach, results show that it can help certain audiences engage more deeply with issues around climate change and carbon reduction. Important lessons can be drawn for other initiatives that aim to engage the public on climate change.

Cross-Cultural Approaches to Understanding the Emotional Geographies of Climate Change

2017

Climate scientists have proposed that many people have not yet felt the results of climate change. This explains, at least in part, why some people are so unmotivated to make changes to mitigate climate change. Yet, a range of studies focused on other types of weather-related anticipated and experienced disasters, such as drought, clearly demonstrate that climate-related phenomena can elicit strong emotional reactions. Using a combination of open-ended interview questions and close-ended survey questions, we conducted semi-structured interviews in three biophysically vulnerable communities (Mobile, Alabama; Kodiak, Alaska; and Phoenix, Arizona). The relatively high number of respondents who expressed sadness and worry at the possible outcomes of climate change indicates emotional awareness, even among climate change skeptics. The patterns were significantly gendered, with men across the three sites less likely to indicate hope. Results suggest that emotional aspects of climate chang...

Engaging with Climate Change: Comparing the Cultures of Science and Activism

2019

This chapter reports on interviews with climate scientists and activists, two groups who face the disturbing reality of climate change on a regular basis. The contrasting cultures of science and activism, one institutional and the other informal, had considerable influence over the way in which they dealt with the emotional and ethical challenges of their work. Evidence suggested scientists resorted to social defences such as hyper-rationality, whereas activists adopted a more reflexive and literate approach. This had some dysfunctional consequences for scientists, encouraging abstraction, caution and isolation.