Using Social Sciences to Think the Ecological Transition

Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier is a CNRS researcher at Sciences Po and a member of France’s High Council for the Climate. On the 27th November, she gave a Masterclass at Sciences Po, attended by students from the School of Public Affairs, called “Using Social Sciences to Think the Ecological Transition.”

The perspective she offered to the audience focused on the essential contributions of social sciences to the understanding of the ecological problem. Often, policy-making and public discussions focus on technical solutions, behaviour changes and individual actions. Even if those are key in addressing part of the problem, they put aside the systemic nature of the ecological and climate problems. The framing of the climate problem as an issue of individual emissions is limited in that regard.

Students in the audience were invited for example to keep in mind the social dimension of behaviour changes when thinking about policy-making, such as the unequal distribution of emissions within different population categories. The exposure to environmental problems is unequally distributed, as well as the contribution to the issue and the efforts asked to mitigate them. Mobility and housing are two key elements of the ecological transition for example, but the solutions for their successful decarbonisation vary greatly depending on the revenue and location of households. Policymakers must keep in mind the importance of social inequalities in these issues. 

Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier made the point that climate change is co-substantial to our social organisations, and emissions are not just externalities that can be solved with marginal solutions, even if this is often the framing, especially in economics. Similarly, technologies must not be thought as isolated, neutral tools, but rather social facts that are created and used within networks, and are interdependent with social phenomena. In that regard, socio-technological perspectives have much to contribute to our understanding of the role and relative effectiveness of technologies in the ecological transition.

The key takeaway for future policy makers is that by forgetting the social nature of the causes of the ecological crisis as well as the offered solutions, we undermine the effectiveness of the transition.

Written by Morgane Mayoux, M1 student from the ‘Energy, Environment & Sustainability’ policy stream