Ecological Crisis, Sustainability and the Psychosocial Subject - Beyond Behaviour Change

This book draws on recent developments across a range of perspectives including psychoanalysis, narrative studies, social practice theory, posthumanism and trans-species psychology, to establish a radical psychosocial alternative to mainstream understanding of 'environmental problems'.  Only by addressing the psychological and social structures maintaining unsustainable societies might we glimpse the possibility of genuinely sustainable future.

The challenges posed by the reality of human-caused 'environmental problems' are unprecedented.  Understanding how we respond to knowledge of these problems is vital if we are to have a hope of meeting this challenge.  Psychology and the social sciences have been drafted in to further this understanding, and inform interventions encouraging sustainable behaviour. However, to date, much of psychology has appeared happy to tinker with individual behaviour change, or encourage minor modifications in the social environment aimed at 'nudging' individual behaviour. As the ecological crisis deepens, it is increasingly recognised that mainstream understandings and interventions are inadequate to the collective threat posed by climate change and related ecological crises.

Matthew Adams is Principal Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Brighton, UK. He has published widely on issues of self and identity in the context of modern society. His recent research uses critical psychology and social science to make sense of the ways we respond to climate change and the wider ecological crisis.