The CSO is pleased to welcome Giuseppe Cugnata at the beginning of this year.

Since November 2020, he is a PhD student in Political Science and Sociology under the supervision of Donatella Della Porta at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, and he is also a member of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos) in Florence and a member of the research collective Quantité Critique in Paris.
He is preparing a thesis in political science and sociology entitled: Working title: Living differently and changing society. A comparative analysis of ecological practices of climate protesters in Italy and France.

Giuseppe is a visiting PhD student at the CSO from January to June 2023 where he is hosted by Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier. He is working on the ecological practices of climate activists, with a comparison between France and Italy, at the articulation between sociology of consumption and sociology of social movements.

Abstract

Emerging as a reaction to the failure of the ecological modernization paradigm, the wave of climate protests started in 2018 has re-focused the attention on governmental inaction on climate issues and on the need to pursue a political and collective transformation rather than attributing the responsibility for the climate crisis to individuals and consumers. In this sense, this wave of protests can be interpreted as an attempt to re-politicize the climate debate after a period of depoliticization of environmental issues. However, despite this re- centralization of political and collective action, everyday ecological practices (such as boycott, zero-waste consumption, vegetarianism, etc.) do not seem to be eradicated in the daily life of protesters. Starting from this point, the research aims at analyzing the social determinants and the meanings that everyday ecological practices have for climate protesters. Based on quantitative protest surveys and qualitative interviews, the research will explore the links between individual practices, collective repertoires of action and ideological orientations of climate protesters in two countries with different mobilization contexts, i.e. Italy and France.

Keywords: climate protests, everyday ecological practices, protest survey, semi-structured interview