How sociology can help us save ourselves

Abstract

AbstractThis article is derived from my 2024 ESS presidential address. I discuss my new book and how a sociological lens helps us to understand the process through which we can save ourselves from the climate crisis. After explaining why the state and the market have struggled to implement sufficient policies to address the climate crisis, I present the AnthroShift as a theory that explains how social actors reorient after risk pivots to open windows of opportunity for social change. I discuss why civil society is most likely to mobilize after there is a generalized sense of climate risk and summarize how climate activists are currently engaging in non‐violent civil disobedience as a first step in an expanded civil society sector that is likely to put pressure on the state and the market to help us save ourselves. I conclude by presenting three steps that can be taken to help us save ourselves from the climate crisis.