Young People, Thinking Technologies and Stories of/for the Anthropocence

In a recent blog on The Sociological Review Magazine, we outline a case for developing a sociological imagination for the Anthropocene. We suggested that: A sociological imagination for the Anthropocene must find innovative, productive and critical ways to move beyond the anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and methodological individualism that underpins the more conventional sense of a …

Blah, Blah, Blah: Young People, the Climate Crisis, Hope and the ‘Dithering’ of Adults

image credit In a recent article in The Guardian, Damian Carrington (2021) presents a number of extracts from a speech by Greta Thunberg to the Youth4Climate summit in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday September 28, 2021 – a speech that was timed in relation to the upcoming COP 26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. Greta’s targets in the speech are political, business and …

ISOLATION?

Notes from March, 2020. Days on the South West Marine Debris Clean Up scouring the coastline of Lutruwita (Tasmania) alongside volunteers removing rubbish from the beaches, bays and inlets. By Selena de Carvalho When you cross a border nothing changes, because you’re still in the same territory, and everything changes because you are in a …

COVID-19, Climate Change and Young People’s Futures: Views from Europe

Like their Australian counterparts, young people in Europe entering the world of work faced a job market characterized by underemployment, casualization, and wage stagnation even before COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the global economy. But, while Australian politicians prevaricate on the future of jobs and training, EU policy aims to meet demands for intergenerational justice by …

COVID-19 and the Problem of Generations

Authors: Peter Kelly, James Goring, Meave Noonan. Every afternoon the Australian Government Department of Health issues an updated infographic that provides a snapshot of the state-of-play of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. The image above is from May 9. It shows a number of things, including that recorded infections indicate that COVID-19 cases are fairly evenly spread …

COVID-19 and Young People’s Sustainable Futures: Worst Case Scenarios?

Futures and Scenario Planning Any glance into the future is necessarily tied to imponderables; there is always more than one possible development path – because there is so much that simply cannot be foreseen and because the future will also be shaped by decisions that we still have to be taken. Today, context is changing …