On the topic of "Social Cohesion in Climate Change" Angelina Göb (Research Institute for Social Cohesion, TI Hannover) and Leonie Tuitjer (Leibniz Universität Hannover) organized a symposium as part of the #GeoWoche2021. The digital #GeoWoche2021 was hosted by the German Society for Geography (DGfG). The multidisciplinary panel included geographer Susann Schäfer of the University of Jena, ethnologist Franz Krause of the University of Cologne, social psychologist Jonas Rees of Bielefeld University, and political scientist Sarah Louise Nash of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU, Vienna).
The expert discussion was part of the conference day dedicated to the climate crisis and aimed at linking the research foci "climate change" and "social cohesion", which have been treated solitarily so far, in a multi-perspective way. In addition, it also addressed the question of how climate change is conceived culturally, theoretically and methodologically, and which forms of cohesion play a role here in relation to which social groups. Climate change, a topic that is locally situated and embedded in global contexts, can be experienced and analyzed both as a test of social cohesion and as an opportunity and impetus for rethinking and acting anew in the context of social transformation processes.
