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When urgency feels distant: rethinking social perceptions of climate change among social sciences and humanities researchers

2026-07-02Capítulo de livro Acesso restrito
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datacite.subject.sdg13:Ação Climática
datacite.subject.sdg10:Reduzir as Desigualdades
datacite.subject.sdg04:Educação de Qualidade
datacite.subject.sdg16:Paz, Justiça e Instituições Eficazes
dc.contributor.authorAlves, Fátima
dc.contributor.authorVidal, Diogo Guedes
dc.contributor.authorRollo, Maria Fernanda
dc.contributor.editorLeal Filho, Walter
dc.contributor.editorTrevisan, Laís Viera
dc.contributor.editorCaeiro, Sandra
dc.contributor.editorMapar, Mahsa
dc.contributor.editorTrindade, Jorge
dc.date.accessioned2026-09-02T14:34:15Z
dc.date.available2026-09-02T14:34:15Z
dc.date.issued2026-07-02
dc.description.abstractDespite a high degree of intellectual and professional engagement with the climate crisis, researchers within the social sciences and humanities often perceive this phenomenon as temporally deferred and spatially distant. Drawing on survey data from 85 researchers—European and non-European—collected under the COST Action SHiFT (CA21166), this paper interrogates a disjunction between abstract awareness and lived immediacy. While 87.7% of respondents recognise climate change as a global threat, only 60.5% identify it as a serious local issue, and a mere 50.6% connect it to their daily lives. These findings reveal not so much a paradox as a patterned affective distance, shaped by socio-geographical location, generational positionalities, and divergent epistemic cultures. The study also highlights the mediating role of emotional and spiritual dispositions. For some, climate change is framed within theological or metaphysical narratives that attenuate the urgency of intervention; for others, unacknowledged emotional responses contribute to disengagement or inertia. At the same time, pockets of creativity and empathetic praxis—often among younger scholars—point toward emerging modes of climate engagement that resist conventional dichotomies between science and affect, knowledge and belief. Rather than interpreting this dissonance as a deficit, the paper calls for a reframing of climate engagement within higher education institutions. We argue for strategies rooted in place-based education, interdisciplinary collaboration, and emotionally attuned pedagogies. This study invites a recalibration of how we theorise climate engagement: not as a linear function of knowledge acquisition or moral commitment, but as a layered, dynamic process entangled with scales of perception, collective imaginaries, and affective infrastructures.eng
dc.description.sponsorshipThe authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to all members of the SHiFT network who generously participated in this study. Your insights, reflections, and continued commitment to climate-engaged research were invaluable to this work. This research would not have been possible without your thoughtful contributions and openness. This work was supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., in the framework of the Project UIDB/04004/2025—Centre for Functional Ecology—Science for the People and the Planet financed by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) and to the Associate Laboratory TERRA, with reference LA/P/0092/2020. This study was developed in scope of the CA21166—Social Sciences and Humanities for Transformation and Climate Resilience (SHiFT) with the MoU 080/22 funded by the European Union, with reference to the Virtual Mobility Grants “Climate change perceptions| Quantitative data analysis” (E-COST-GRANT-CA21166-43a73e99) and “Climate change perceptions|Qualitative data analysis” (E-COST-GRANT-CA21166-c3d3da68).
dc.identifier.citationAlves, F., Vidal, D.G., Rollo, M.F. (2026). When Urgency Feels Distant: Rethinking Social Perceptions of Climate Change Among Social Sciences and Humanities Researchers. In: Leal Filho, W., Trevisan, L.V., Caeiro, S., Mapar, M., Trindade, J. (eds) Sustainability Transition and Global Citizenship in the Digital Era: Innovations in Universities. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-22076-9_30
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/978-3-032-22076-9_30
dc.identifier.isbn978-3-032-22075-2
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/22336
dc.language.isoeng
dc.peerreviewedyes
dc.publisherSpringer
dc.relationLaboratory for Sustainable Land Use and Ecosystem Services
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.titleWhen urgency feels distant: rethinking social perceptions of climate change among social sciences and humanities researcherseng
dc.typebook part
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.awardNumberLA/P/0092/2020
oaire.awardTitleLaboratory for Sustainable Land Use and Ecosystem Services
oaire.awardURIhttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/21837
oaire.citation.endPage641
oaire.citation.startPage625
oaire.citation.titleSustainability Transition and Global Citizenship in the Digital Era: Innovations in Universities. World Sustainability Series
oaire.fundingStreamConcurso para Atribuição do Estatuto e Financiamento de Laboratórios Associados (LA)
oaire.versionhttp://purl.org/coar/version/c_970fb48d4fbd8a85
person.familyNameAlves
person.familyNameVidal
person.familyNameRollo
person.givenNameFátima
person.givenNameDiogo Guedes
person.givenNameMaria Fernanda
person.identifierhttps://scholar.google.pt/citations?user=NRP26CoAAAAJ&hl=pt-PT&oi=ao
person.identifier.ciencia-idF41D-6E75-A58D
person.identifier.ciencia-idC918-3B10-A36E
person.identifier.orcid0000-0003-2600-8652
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-2777-2372
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-2249-7279
person.identifier.scopus-author-id57205490753
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relation.isProjectOfPublication25d05161-3077-4552-9973-c05b90fcd806
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Extensão do Centro de Ecologia Funcional da Universidade de Coimbra na Universidade Aberta | Capítulos/artigos em livros internacionais / Book chapters/papers in international books