Ecological crisis, sustainability and the psychosocial subject

The International Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report   engaged with psychological and sociological knowledge base in some detail for the first time. In this research project (an individual monograph for Palgrave’s psychosocial series entitled Ecological crisis, sustainability and the psychosocial subject) Matthew Adams suggests that there is radical potential behind some of the headline statements made in the report. He unpacks some of this potential and considers how it sits with wider take-up of psychological and sociological knowledge in accounting for human responses to ecological crisis, and in explaining and predicting climate change ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’.

Adams argues that existing mainstream sociological and psychological approaches, and the way they have been taken up to inform interventions are insufficient. He proposes that to fully grasp the nature of the human response to ecological degradation a psychosocial understanding is required and he attempts to develop this understanding by drawing on contemporary and innovative interdisciplinary work in this area which has been largely neglected by the mainstream application of psychological and sociological knowledge.

The book’s focus is the ecological crisis, and the rise of psychological and social science explanations to understand the individual and collective ‘barriers’ and ‘enablers’ of sustainable behaviour.