Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / This dissertation examines the climate movement as a social field where actors vie for position and capital. This competition strongly influences framing, tactics, and strategy, while it ultimately bears on the effectiveness of mobilization. I analyzed the climate activist field (CAF) through a case study of resistance against a gas pipeline project. In the first phase of resistance, I found there to be a divergence between local activists with little to no experience in the CAF and climate activists operating within it. In the second phase, after climate activists had taken over, there was a division among climate activists themselves. Here, climate activists carried themselves and made decisions based on what they thought was objectively the correct thing to do. However, activists’ practices (encompassing decisions around tactics and strategy but also their judgments and disposition) were structured through the competition for the rewards of the CAF—Climate Activist Capital (CAC), especially Symbolic CAC—and the associated increased status for activists. I used a mixed method approach involving a survey (N=146), participant observation (200 hours), and interviews (N=51). The survey collected data on activist background and preferences, as well as subjective assessments of their own participation and indicators of economic and cultural capital. Participant observation in a range of groups and social spaces allowed for analysis of activist practices in real, observable ways. Both the survey and participant observation informed a purposive interviewing strategy that collected data from the most heavily involved to more peripheral activists. The analysis sought to locate patterns in activist background, quantity and composition of capital, and practices. Differences in activist practices were hypothesized to be the outcome of the interrelation among: an actor’s background embedded in the habitus; an actor’s volume and composition of capital, as well as their social trajectory; and the competition for capital and position within the CAF (itself structured by actors, their backgrounds and practices, and influence from other fields). The hypothesis received mixed support in the data. Participants in the resistance were not conscious of how their preferences for tactics and strategy were guided by the competition to valorize Symbolic CAC inflected by activist orientation, relatively internal or external. Structured by the field that they help construct, climate activists’ practices and the overall effort to stop the pipeline project became increasingly internally oriented, situated antagonistically with the field of power. This resulted in an increased distance between climate activists and non-climate activists as well as a focus on civil disobedience to the exclusion of other tactics. The dissertation represents a novel approach to understanding dynamics within the climate movement and contributes to three areas of research. First, my research on resistance against fossil fuel infrastructure addresses a deficit of empirical scholarship on climate activism, especially at the local level. Second, I contribute to the social movement scholarship on strategic choices by locating them between individual rational calculation and predetermined agency-less decisions by focusing on the effects of activist field position. Third, the research extends Bourdieusian scholarship by testing his theoretical schema built around social reproduction in a field that is organized around social change. In bringing a Bourdieusian approach to movement scholarship and the climate movement in particular, the research delivers an analysis that weaves together micro-level social processes—activists and their practices objectively positioned in the CAF—with an historically developed CAF at the macro-level. The analysis is pertinent not just to scholars but to climate activists and activists more broadly. Ultimately, I argue that the climate movement will be served best by drawing on the distinct advantages of both internal and external spaces in the CAF. This requires more reflexivity and introspection among climate activists so they may understand how their position informs their practices and how they can more consciously mediate the position-to-practices process and bend them in contextually appropriate ways, which will lead to more effective climate activists and enhanced climate movement efficacy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

<p>A worldwide movement has emerged in recent years, bringing millions of young people together to demand action on climate change. While youths’ high level of vulnerability to climate change could make them especially credible, and therefore powerful, messengers on this topic, there has been relatively little scholarly attention on <em>youth</em> activism and the nuances of framing by youth climate activists in particular. This gap may be especially important in the United States, which represents a substantial portion of global emissions but has historically struggled to establish enduring climate policy. Can this new generation of activists – many of whom are not yet old enough to vote – uniquely impact climate policy in the United States? My dissertation uses a multi-method approach to explore this question, focusing on communication by youth activists. I begin by examining the distinct frames that U.S. youth activists use to describe the issue of climate change, and exploring how they perceive those messages will influence the policymaking process. I do this using interview data with youth activists and examining Tweets, finding that youth activists often rely on climate science frames rather than justice-related frames that arguably “fit” well with their identities and vulnerabilities as youth. Next, I consider the effect of different climate frames on three sets of actors relevant to policymaking on this issue: (i) the general (adult) public, (ii) the youth public, and (iii) policymakers. More specifically, I draw on data from an original survey experiment and interviews with local- and state-level officials. I find clear evidence that the “fit” between message framing and messenger source matters – youth can be effective messengers about climate change, but particularly when they invoke arguments about the intergenerational and environmental injustices of climate inaction. The role of source identity is a critical contribution to the political communication and climate framing literature. Although many scholars have pointed to source identity as an important factor, the relationship between message content and source identity has been underexamined in the literature regarding climate change to date. This study also contributes to the framing literature through a focus on age as an important facet of source identity and by examining the causal influence of justice-based frames. Finally, this study aims to contribute to the social movement literature by a focus on the unique impacts of communication by <em>youth</em> climate activists. Given youths’ high level of vulnerability to climate impacts, this dissertation work could have notable environmental justice implications as well.</p>

Is it possible to achieve ecological sustainability with our current democratic system? This question constitutes the democracy-environment nexus which has been a core theme in both the public debate as well as in research ever since the climate issue gained status of being a social problem in the 1970s. We are constantly presented with increasingly alarming science about the consequences of global warming. Yet, the coordinated political responses for effective measures against such consequences, are still missing. The question therefore remains highly relevant. One actor in society that certainly raises frustration about the neglected climate change responses, are the social movements. With a new wave of climate movements, we have seen key figures like Greta Thunberg take a seat at the tables during UN Climate summits. Fridays for Future among many other climate movements are criticizing the current democratic system’s lack of effective environmental policies. It is important to analyze their critique to understand if we need to change the current democratic system in order to tackle climate change. This paper aims to make a contribution to this debate by analyzing statements made by the new Swedish climate movement Återställ Våtmarker. For my analysis I use an analytical chart of the ideal types “ecological democracy” and “environmental democracy”, constructed by Jonathan Pickering, Karin Bäckstrand and David Schlosberg. These ideal types are used as a systematic concept of the democracy-environment nexus. The statements are found in my in-depth interview with one of the organization’s press contacts, on their website as well as in media. By categorizing the statements as either ecological democratic or environmental democratic I intend to conclude whether Återställ Våtmarker has an idea of democracy that poses systemic criticism towards our current system. The findings of this study support that Återställ Våtmarker’s view of democracy has more tendencies towards ecological democracy. In this paper, I have therefore found empirical evidence suggesting that Återställ Våtmarker pose systemic criticism towards our current democratic system.

In the face of dire threats posed by anthropogenic climate change, a growing international Movement for Fossil Fuel Divestment has emerged to challenge the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry. Building off a history of college and university divestment campaigns, students are spearheading the movement to rid their institutions’ endowments of investments in the top 200 companies with the largest reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Highlighting perspectives from within the movement and drawing from literature in social movement theory and Climate Justice, I explore three crucial components of the student Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Climate Justice, perceptions of risk, and potential political impacts. I argue that Fossil Fuel Divestment is a powerful component of the broader Climate Movement because it is mobilizing and radicalizing a new generation of activists to fight the climate crisis, challenging the dominant paradigm of individualized climate action, and is significantly influencing the public discourse on climate change. In seeking to further illuminate the power of this movement, I explore the possibilities and limitations of divestment as a tactic for Climate Justice and offer recommendations for moving forward.

This thesis offers a critique of the dominant strategy to prevent catastrophic climate change, which I call the market fix, and starting points for developing an alternative strategy, which I call the common transition. To prevent catastrophic climate change GHG emissions must both peak by around 2015 and be reduced to near zero by 2050. I will argue that it is unlikely that the market fix will be able to reduce GHG emissions sufficiently because there is a powerful and resilient drive for destructive kinds of economic growth embedded in the relationship between states and the global economy. For this reason, the market fix relies on unrealistically rapid technological development to reduce GHG emissions sufficiently without threatening general economic growth or powerful economic interests. I will argue that self organizing networks and commons institutions, the two key elements of the common transition, can be woven together to change the relationship between societies and their economies in order to weaken the drive for destructive kinds of economic growth, directly reduce GHG emissions, and create a new context for climate action in which societies have a greater ability to achieve zero GHG emissions by 2050.

Progressive religious leaders are playing an increasingly important role in the effort to combat climate change. Through a combination of unstructured in-depth interviews and primary source analysis, this thesis highlights nine U.S. religious leaders from various denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam who are actively involved in working on climate issues. Drawing on literature in social movement theory, I explore how clergy are uniquely influential in climate issues because of the organizational advantage and moral authority they hold through their positions as religious leaders, granting them the ability to highlight social justice implications of climate change with distinctive legitimacy. Clergy engage in climate issues through a number of tactics and myriad activities spanning three domains: their congregations, the climate movement, and policy circles. While religious leaders are imbued with moral authority that allows them to speak powerfully on the social justice implications of climate change, they are also limited in a number of ways precisely because they are working within a religious context.

Discourse has the power to organize thought—and therefore, to limit imagination. The purpose of this project is to trace the contours of climate change discourse constructed by transnational fossil fuel corporations, to make visible the ideological barriers it creates to imagining post-capitalist alternatives. It is undertaken in the context of a well-established urgency for global collaboration to halt, mitigate, and adapt to the social, economic, and ecological impacts of climate change, and takes as its point of departure the fundamental link between ecological degradation and the capitalist mode of production (with its accompanying imperatives of accumulation and profit), as well as the necessity of counter-hegemonic praxis to pursuing system-transformative change on the scale required for humanity to negotiate the looming crisis in a just and ecologically viable way. Conceptualizing popular media as a discursive battleground in which the voices of corporations (through the evolving mediums of advertisement) are privileged, I employ critical discourse analysis to explore the framing of climate change messages by five major transnational oil and gas corporations, toward developing an analytical framework for the burgeoning climate change movement grounded at the intersection of global corporate capitalism and ecological degradation. Climate change messages included images, videos, and narratives intended for public consumption which spoke to the source, resolution, and/or future of human-induced and climate-related ecological problems. These were drawn from corporate websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and YouTube channels over the course of 2016. As action research, I have undertaken this project with the explicit aim of empowering climate movements – of which I count myself a part – to imagine alternative futures. To contribute to this aim, I have created a media literacy toolkit that links corporate climate change messages with the interests they represent to make visible the dynamics of power that mobilize those interests. / Graduate

Ce mémoire vise à approfondir un cadre théorique élaboré dans les années 2000 par la sociologue Viviana Zelizer pour comprendre comment l’activité économique (la consommation, la production, les échanges) prend forme à travers une pratique sociale qu’elle nomme travail relationnel. Ce concept reflète les conflits de correspondance entre transactions économiques, culture et relations sociales dans la vie économique. Depuis quelques années des chercheurs en sociologie économique et économie politique tentent d’élargir la portée de ce cadre théorique, construit à partir des relations intimes, afin de changer son niveau du micro vers le macro. J’adopte cette même problématique théorique en explorant comment le mouvement climatique étudiant à Montréal « travaille » la société québécoise pour répondre à la crise climatique. J’ai mené 10 entretiens semi-dirigés avec des activistes présentant un fort niveau d’engagement pour la lutte climatique dans plusieurs groupes militants participant à ce mouvement social au Québec. Mes résultats montrent plusieurs manières par lesquelles la culture et les relations sociales s’entremêlent aux activités économiques dans les discours des activistes concernant l’économie politique. Spécifiquement, les activistes climatiques misent sur la solidarité, le partage, l’interdépendance et la durabilité pour repenser l’économie et son architecture sociale. C’est ce que je rattache au concept de travail relationnel de Viviana Zelizer. Mon analyse m’amène à proposer le concept de travail relationnel civil pour représenter une pratique politique visant à transformer symboliquement l’« arrière-plan relationnel » de l’activité économique, c’est-à-dire l’appartenance à une communauté imaginée et des modèles normatifs d’échange. / This dissertation aims to develop a theoretical framework elaborated in the 2000s by sociologist Viviana Zelizer, meant to understand how economic activity (consumption, production, and exchange) takes shape through a social practice called relational work. This concept illustrates how conflicts of correspondence between economic transactions, meaning-making and social relations are central to economic life. In recent years, scholars in economic sociology and political economy have recognized the need to deepen the analytical scope of Zelizer’s framework by scaling-up relational work from the micro-level to the macro-level. My research follows such a theoretical puzzle and explores how the student-climate movement in Montréal “works” Québec society in the context of a climate crisis and emergency. My findings reveal multiple ways in which culture and social relations are intermingled with economic activity in the activist’s discourses of political economy. Specifically, the cultural repertoire of climate activists includes solidarity, sharing, interdependence and sustainability as tools for “rethinking” the economy and its social architecture. This cultural logic is similar to relational work as defined by Viviana Zelizer. Through my analysis I elaborate the notion of civil relational work to represent a political practice that aims to construct and transform the “relational background” of economic activity, that is, the identification with an imagined community and normative models of exchange.