Environment: Critical Social Psychology in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This chapter first provides an overview of contemporary understandings of ecological crises, including climate change, as an outcome of human activity. It then describes how psychology has been co-opted into addressing this crisis, particularly in terms of trying to understand what factors determine more ‘sustainable behaviour’. This is followed by an account of a ‘social turn’ in literature concerned with climate change mitigation and adaptation. An analysis is provided of the ways in which ‘the social’ is foregrounded in that literature. Finally, more critical approaches to the intersecting social and psychological dimensions of ecological crisis are explored and their relevance to critical social psychology is considered.