In Episode 8, we stick again with the subjective side of the crises of the Anthropocene, but turning to a more explicitly sociological approach. How do the ways in which we relate to the world shape the problems of climate change and the environment? Pretty fundamentally, according to our guest, the award-winning social theorist, Hartmut Rosa. Indeed, for Rosa, this question of ‘our relations to the world’ is the key to understanding how we now find ourselves in such a mess… and is richly suggestive of what we need to do – in society more generally, and in scientific research – to get through and beyond it. Specifically, we need to recognize that what we are really seeking is the experience of ‘resonance’, with the world, with others and with ourselves. Building on this insight as basis for a reformulated conception of what the ‘good life’ really is, Rosa maps out his paradigm-shifting ‘sociology of resonance’, as in his 2019 landmark book. Join us in another wide-ranging and exciting discussion of how we can learn to see the predicament of the Anthropocene differently, and possibly more productively, including: the fundamental nature of the epidemic of acceleration and alienation in contemporary social life; the pivotal role of self-efficacy as against a sense of powerlessness, including regarding new technologies; the contradictory form of our normal relations to ‘nature’; the uncontrollability of the world; and much more…
