Teaching sociology in the era of climate breakdown:A call for systemic transformation

We teach sociology on a dangerously heating planet. The first half of the 2020s has witnessed extreme heatwaves, devastating floods, catastrophic droughts, agricultural shocks, and rampant wildfires: harbingers of a situation that is due to escalate towards the end of the century. In this paper, we argue that for sociological education to meet the existential challenge posed by the climate and ecological emergency, we must do more than simply add climate to the curriculum. Instead, a fundamental rethink of the discipline’s epistemes, theories, and canon is urgently needed, with far-reaching pedagogical implications. We suggest that sociological education requires an epistemic transformation towards a pluriverse of ecocentrisms, a planetary and decolonial reckoning of social theory, and a reappraisal of sociology’s canon. We conclude with a range of low-threshold first steps those teaching sociology can take toward ecologising sociology for the era of climate breakdown.