Guest panelists: Carl Cassegård, Professor of Sociology and Occupational Science (Gothenburg University), and Håkan Thörn, Professor of Sociology and Occupational Science (Gothenburg University)

For this seminar, Carl Cassegård and Håkan Thörn will discuss their recent book, titled Post-Apocalyptic Environmentalism: The Green Movement in Times of Catastrophe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). In this book, they identify three competing narratives that have evolved within the environmental movement. The first is the narrative of green progress, which has been central to the idea of sustainable development since the late 1980s. The second is an apocalyptic narrative, which became prominent in the environmental movement after the Second World War. The apocalyptic narrative expresses the fear of a threatening future, but it is a fear intermixed with a hope that ecological catastrophe can still be averted. In the last decade, a new narrative – post-apocalyptic environmentalism – has emerged. Unlike the other two narrative archetypes, post-apocalyptic environmentalism highlights the grief over loss and injustice that has been suffered in connection to ecological catastrophes, perceived as ongoing and/or unstoppable. Cassegård’s and Thörn’s work raises serious questions for those interested in the apocalyptic imagination, eco-anxiety, and environmentalism more broadly.Johannes Stripple and Mia-Marie Hammarlin serves as chairs of the session.