The environmental crisis and the construction of new social bonds

Abstract

Late modernity is reconfiguring the way the climate crisis is broadcast and communicated. The concept of «risk» as a contingency acquires central relevance in understanding it. There is risk because it is socially defined as such; scientific definitions are not enough. This produces a backdrop of uncertainty in which subjects are obliged to make decisions. In this context, social networks become particularly prominent when broadcasting and communicating that uncertainty by means of web pages, the internet, messaging services etc. A new relational space is formed: short messages, the intensive use of emotive images, untethering (space-time rupture) and so on. In addition, a new relationship is established between science and politics. The need to reduce that social uncertainty redefines the relationships between the two spheres: politics needs science to justify its decisions, and science is increasingly involved in political decisions. The concept of «risk» also conditions how social connections are redefined. At a time in which a process of individualisation can be observed, it is necessary to redefine community relationships in response to the ecological crisis. They are constructed on the basis of identity among equals, not collective action, giving rise to a new communitarianism. The thesis defended here is that we live in a landscape of redefining the relational space when broadcasting and communicating the climate crisis, affecting the way in which social connections are built in late modernity.