Inaugural lecture: Anders Blok

To celebrate his appointment as Professor of Environmental and Climate Sociology at the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen, Anders Blok will give his inaugural lecture on 15 May 2024, followed by a reception.

Title of lecture: Towards ecological democracy? Environmental sociological imagination then, now, and for the future

Anders describes the content of his planned lecture in this way:

In this inaugural lecture, I will trace a journey in three steps, tied together by my environmental sociological interest in questions of what ecological democracy implies and how it might come about.

The first step reflects on my own research work and trajectory, dealing with local, national, and global green civil societies on key environmental problems of biodiversity and climate change. I will suggest how this work ties in with questions of civic participation in environmental state-making and multi-level governance, as key to what ecological democracy must mean.

In the second step, I propose a reading of the contemporary state of environmental sociology as a research field, stressing its key contributions to core (inter-)disciplinary questions also of public interest: what drives environmental problems; how are groups and societies being impacted; why are societies failing to deal adequately with them; and how might we be able to do so more effectively and legitimately? Answering these kinds of questions, I will argue, require environmental sociological imagination.

In the third step, I then briefly sketch what I take to be the contours of an environmental sociological imagination for the future, oriented more strongly to the question of an ecological democracy to come. Such will require more concerted empirical research in four interconnected directions, I argue, to do with everyday environmental citizenship, green civic engagement, eco-democratic innovation, and democratizing environmental expertise.

This final step thus doubles as both my own and a suggested collective future research agenda.

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The event is open to all, and we hope to see many of you there!

The reception takes place in ”Konsistoriums mødesal” next door to the auditorium.

On behalf of IFRO,

Peter Sandøe, Professor and Head of Section for Consumption, Bioethics and Governance.