230086 FPR Research Practice 2: Climate Everday practices in Austria (2024W)

A Bachelor's thesis can be written as part of this course.

The climate crisis is increasingly shaping our everyday lives. Its effects are becoming more and more noticeable in the form of exceptional heat waves, floods and an intensification of global conflicts. At the same time, societies and states are increasingly responding to these challenges through climate policy, mitigation and adaptation measures. These measures - such as the insulation of houses, the conversion of cities for new mobility concepts or the pricing of certain CO2-intensive lifestyles - are creating new social realities. These require a high degree of democratic legitimacy and participation.

In the research internship, we want to investigate how people in Austria perceive the climate crisis and the social and political reactions to it. We face a twofold challenge: on the one hand, we want to trace relevant transformation processes, drawing on environmental sociology and urban and spatial sociology. This involves the question of how people perceive or ignore the climate crisis in everyday life: To what extent are everyday processes interpreted as climate issues or challenges and by whom? How and where are these processes located in socio-spatial terms?

In addition, this second part of the research internship is a continuation and further development of the sociological theories and methods discussed in the first part and the application of these in order to understand the meaning that people attach to these processes. Only by understanding everyday contexts, meanings and socially shared emotions that have political relevance can we understand which strategies of action people develop and consider legitimate: What do individuals and groups consider to be the right way to deal with the challenges arising from the social and political diagnoses of the climate crisis? How are strategies communicated publicly? Who is held responsible for which processes, and what implications does this have for democratic action in everyday climate life in Austria?

This part is a continuation of the topics discussed below and their practical application.

*City, space and climate transformations
*Countryside, rural areas and climate transformations

Further approaches are:
*Emotions in the climate crisis
*Perception of social and economic inequality in the climate crisis
*Political communication, negotiations of legitimacy and democratic participation in the climate crisis
(*Climate activism)

The main part of the course consists of the practical research task of sociologically investigating an area of everyday climate life and implementing and completing a research project. As a guiding example for finding a relevant perspective and question, we will deal with spatial sociological perspectives and everyday references and perceptions of the climate crisis.

Within the framework of these fields, students are encouraged to work on their own topics in more detail (regardless of this, there is the possibility of writing a Bachelor's thesis as part of the course).

These topics will be discussed in the course, embedded in the theoretical framework of sociological approaches to the perception of the climate crisis and students are expected to be able to independently apply the appropriate methods to their chosen field and embed them in the research.

If you have any questions about the course, please contact Anna Raza from September (e-mail to follow).