On Social Scientific Approaches to the Concept of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change, both as a natural and a social phenomenon, represents a defining theme and challenge for contemporary global scientific, economic, political and cultural life. In my study, I would like to present an approach to the issue that does not primarily focus on the specific social effects of climate change, but tries to model how the phenomenon is thematised in social communication networks. According to my assumption, as a discursive node that thematizes social knowledge, the concept of climate change also participates in the definition of meaning systems that are much broader than the specific topic. The study presents the concepts of climate change created in social communication processes, reviews the structure and different layers of these concepts, and also the discourses of social communication related to climate change. The study also addresses the problems indicated by the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘anthropocene’, which, through the interpretation of climate change as a natural and social phenomenon, point to a new thematisation of the relationship between nature and society within the system of social knowledge.