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Societies Under Threat pp 87–99Cite as

Climate Change in Sociocultural Contexts: One Risk, Multiple Threats

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Part of the book series: Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research ((FSSR,volume 3))

Abstract

Climate change is one of the main risks humanity faces this century. Numerous studies in social sciences show that people have a biased understanding of scientific knowledge regarding climate change and, consequently, do not adopt the good practices. We consider the concept of threat helpful to understand why this is so. Indeed, it integrates cognitive, emotional and social dimensions in order to better understand how the public understand and cope with climate change issues. In this chapter, we present three studies about the public’s perceptions of and reactions to climate change in France and in Germany that illustrate how one and the same phenomenon (climate change) is differently construed as a threat (i.e., socially, cognitively and emotionally) in two cultural contexts (France and Germany). Moreover, these three studies vary in their analysis levels of the phenomenon: from macro-social to micro-social contexts (i.e., in the media, in interacting groups, in private) highlighting that threat needs a multilevel approach.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This definition of threat makes the concept quite similar to social representations (see Howarth, 2006; Bauer & Gaskell, 2008 for examples). In fact, studies presented in this paper were largely conducted within this theoretical framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GRePS (Groupe de Recherche en Psychologie sociale EA4163), Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France

    Sabine Caillaud

  2. Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale: menaces et société, Université de Paris, Paris, France

    Virginie Bonnot & Silvia Krauth-Gruber

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  1. Sabine Caillaud
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  2. Virginie Bonnot
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  3. Silvia Krauth-Gruber
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Correspondence to Sabine Caillaud .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Directeur d’Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

    Denise Jodelet

  2. Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Jorge Vala

  3. Laboratoire de Psychology Sociale, University of Paris, Paris, France

    Ewa Drozda-Senkowska

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Caillaud, S., Bonnot, V., Krauth-Gruber, S. (2020). Climate Change in Sociocultural Contexts: One Risk, Multiple Threats. In: Jodelet, D., Vala, J., Drozda-Senkowska, E. (eds) Societies Under Threat. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39315-1_8

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