Book Launch Climate Emergency: How Societies Create the Climate Crisis

Mark Harvey is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He has developed a comparative and historical approach to economic sociology across many fields, undertaking primary research in Europe, Latin America, China, India and the USA.

 A panel discussion launching Mark Harvey’s new book, Climate Emergency: How Societies Create the Climate Crisis (Emerald, 2021).

Panel Discussion featuring: Professor Mark Harvey, Dr Jeremy Krikler, Professor Nigel South and Dr Katy Wheeler,

Climate Emergency analyses the socio-economic and political forces driving the climate emergency, developing the complementary concept of 'sociogenic climate change' to show how societies both create the crisis and are challenged by it in different ways. In introducing the sociogenic approach to climate change, Harvey re-examines history through the lens of climate change, re-writing the climate impact of the British industrial revolution; US settler colonialism; slavery and Native American genocides; the electrification of societies and infrastructures for fossil-fuelled transportation; and changes in our eating habits. In the big historical picture, different societies and political economies have both created an unequal world and so continue to make an unequal contribution to climate change. This can only be understood by showing how societies have come to distinctively exploit planetary resources in different ways. Societies create the crisis and have to be politically involved in addressing the crisis.

“…establishes a new benchmark, and provides new tools, for the critical social-scientific study of global climate change..” - Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia, Canada

“A landmark contribution” - Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany

This seminar is part of an open webinar series, hosted by the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation.