– Which research project are you working on the most at the moment?
– My main work is on the Horizon project CIDAPE, which focuses on emotions and perceptions around environmental and climate issues. The work package I’m involved in examines this from a comparative class perspective. We have carried out interviews and focus groups with people from three different social classes in four different countries – Austria, Spain, Slovakia and Norway.
– What are you hoping to find out?
– We want to gain a better understanding of the social differences in attitudes towards, and engagement with, environmental issues. It is already well established that there are quite clear social inequalities in what people think about environmental questions and how concerned they are about them. Much of the empirical research in this field is quantitative, but we are using interviews and focus groups to get a better grasp of how people in different class positions understand environmental problems and climate change, and especially how they assess other people’s ways of relating to these issues. The question we are working on now is: how do people in different class positions draw boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate ways of caring about, acting on and talking about climate?
– Why is this important?
– The climate and environmental crisis is an existential challenge, and a great many people recognise that it requires action. Yet there is considerable disagreement about how responsibility should be distributed between public authorities, business and individuals; who should bear the costs of the transition; and what counts as a fair and credible way of engaging.
– Environmental and climate issues are often perceived as something that mainly concerns certain elite groups and otherwise well-off urban dwellers with a passion for organic food and cargo bikes. Climate measures can therefore be experienced as moralising, or as disconnected from everyday economic and practical constraints. If the green transition is to gain broad and lasting support, it is not enough simply to tell people that they need to care more. We also need to understand the different experiences, conceptions of justice and notions of responsibility that people draw on when they evaluate climate and climate policies.
– Who are you collaborating with?
– CIDAPE is a large project, and I mostly relate to the work package. It is led by Till Hilmar at the University of Vienna, and the other researchers on the project are Sylvia Herzog at the University of Vienna, Patrik Gažo and Dominik Želinský at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and Janina Hahne at the University of Valladolid.
– What do you look for when choosing collaborators?
– Good question. I don’t think I look for much beyond shared research interests and that they’re nice people to work with.
– Who is the research relevant for outside academia, and what are you doing to ensure they benefit from it?
– I would say the research is relevant for public authorities and the environmental movement, but also for the wider public. A significant part of CIDAPE is precisely about cooperation with civil society actors and about developing forms of dialogue and citizen participation on climate issues.
– European research suggests that climate and environmental questions are becoming a sharper line of political conflict. That is challenging, because the transition will require broad and enduring majorities. It will involve real conflicts of interest, costs, and changes in everyday life, working life and local communities. That is why I think it is important to understand not only which climate measures people support or oppose, but also why some experience them as fair, realistic and legitimate, while others see them as unreasonable or moralising.
– Do you have any examples of the research being used outside academia?
– My mum thinks it’s fun to talk about, at least. Just kidding. Perhaps not in the form of a single, clear success story where the Ministry of Labour suddenly changed course or some start-up rushed to embrace a paper. But sociological research is often used in less direct ways, especially in public debate, where it provides concepts and perspectives that others can think with and develop further.
– In sociology, the value often lies in making social relations visible and understandable, or in presenting them in a new light – including how political conflicts are connected to class, power, everyday life and experiences of justice. I don’t know if we can always point to masses of added value and immediate impact, but that doesn’t mean it is insignificant.
– What other research projects are you involved in?
– I’m currently working on my own smaller projects on class, culture and politics, often in collaboration with PhD candidates and good colleagues, both here at the institute and at other universities.
– What do you find most interesting about being a researcher?
– I’m very pleased with the combination of teaching, research, supervision and dissemination. I really enjoy shutting myself away with my own questions, while at the same time I appreciate the opportunity to go into the lecture theatre and raise my gaze a bit again. Being involved in supervising keen people with their own projects is incredibly instructive. And it’s great fun to be out and about and to see that many others are deeply interested in the kinds of things we grapple with in sociology. I just wish it were easier to combine and balance all of this.