How Do Young People Deal with Border Tensions When Making Climate-Friendly Food Choices? On the Importance of Critical Emotional Awareness for Learning for Social Change

Maria Ojala

doi:10.3390/cli10010008

Abstract

If we are going to be able to fight climate change in an effective way there is a need for a profound sustainability transformation of society. The question is how everyday pro-environmental behavior such as climate-friendly food choices should be looked upon in this context: as something that hides the need for structural change, or as a starting point for a profound transformation? The aim is to discuss how emotions related to conflicts encountered when trying to make everyday climate-friendly food choices in a society that is not always sustainable can be used to promote transformational learning. Interviews were performed with 15 adolescents. Emotions felt in relation to conflicts and how the youth cope were explored. The results show that the youth mainly felt individualized emotions of guilt, helplessness, and irritation and that they coped primarily by distancing themselves from emotions felt, but also sometimes in a problem-focused way and through positive reappraisal. Results are discussed in relation to theories about critical emotional awareness and prefigurative politics. It is argued that by taking account of emotional aspects related to everyday conflicts in a critical manner, issues such as justice could be brought to the surface and transformative learning could be enhanced.

Highlights

Today many sustainability researchers emphasize that if we are going to be able to fight climate change in an effective way there will be a need for a profound transformation of society in a more sustainable direction [1,2,3]
The content of the conflicts the young people experienced were, for example, social conflicts with friends and parents, intrapersonal conflicts related to taste and convenience, practical conflicts related to price, conflicts related to lack of knowledge, and conflicts related to a feeling of not being able to really influence the climate-change problem
The in-depth content of the conflicts that the young people experienced when trying to make climate-friendly food choices and how they coped with them in a practical manner have already been presented in another article based on the interview material [22]

Summary

Introduction

Today many sustainability researchers emphasize that if we are going to be able to fight climate change in an effective way there will be a need for a profound transformation of society in a more sustainable direction [1,2,3]. In this transformative process, social science plays a key role in identifying drivers of and barriers to change. Social science plays a key role in identifying drivers of and barriers to change In this regard, system-change and transformation are often placed in opposition to an individualizedlifestyle-solution approach to climate change. The dichotomy between personal and political activism is seen as false according to these researchers and individual actions in everyday life could, under certain conditions, be a crucial part of a more profound transformation of society [7,8]

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