07 mars 2013 - 08 mars 2013 Meudon, France

International conference organized within the project ENVIGLOB

"Challenging the 'climate consensus'. Perspectives from the social sciences and humanities to analyze 'dissonant voices' in the public debate on climate change"

Conference outline
Climate change is one of the most important global challenges of our time, and scientists have firmly established the reality of the phenomenon, its man-made origins and the necessity to take mitigation and adaptation measures. Yet, like in other fields where political action is closely associated to scientific expertise, "dissonant voices" continue to challenge the mainstream view, obtaining more or less visibility in mass media in different countries and at different moments of the climate debate. How can we explain these phenomena? While research in social sciences has seen the emergence of a rich literature on "climate skeptics", "climate controversies" and "climate denial" lately, no common explanation seems to be able to encompass the specificities of national climate debates and the multiplicity of reasons to challenge "the climate consensus". This international conference succeeds to the workshop "climate controversies in the media" that we organized in September 2010 in Paris. It aims at confronting different theoretical approaches and methodologies, in order to determine what each approach can contribute to a more complete understanding of the phenomenon, what it helps to see and what are its dead angles.
Organizers: Stefan Aykut, Hélène Guillemot, Chantal Pacteau
Institutional support: Research Consortium Climate-Environment-Society (GIS Climat-Environnement-Société)

This conference will be followed by a workshop on representations (March 8 in the afternoon) organized by the Research Consortium Climate-Environment-Society (GIS Climat-Environnement-Société).

Workshop outline
Climate change has in recent years moved from being mainly a physical phenomenon to being simultaneously a political, social, cultural and ethical phenomenon. At present, both individual and collective attitudes and behaviour seem an equally serious challenge in the climate issue as scientific knowledge of the phenomenon itself. In this the various representations of climate change are crucial. The understanding of such representations, which would contribute to an improvement of the climate change knowledge base, calls for interdisciplinarity. With this as a starting point, the present workshop aims at generating fruitful discussions on different kinds of representations (linguistic, cognitive, cultural, social) and on the possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Program
A detailed program will be available shortly.

Registration
Registration is free but mandatory
Click here to register

Access information
Click here to see practical information about how to come to Meudon.

Document(s) joint(s) :  Affiche_A4_032013.pdf