Maïa Fansten

"Eco-anxiety: the significance of a new emotion, between psychology and politics"

Maïa Fansten is an assistant professor at Université Paris-Cité. She is a specialist of mental health issues. She is currently leading the research project "Emocene" dedicated to the sociological study of "eco-anxiety".

 

Abstract:

In this communication, we'll be looking at the social place of eco-anxiety, an emotion that has become particularly visible in the public arena in the space of a few years, and frequently associated with the distress of young people, who are considered to be more preoccupied and anxious about the climate catastrophe. If eco-anxiety has become a highly visible issue, this visibility is ambiguous: it is expressed in terms of mental health and seems to participate in the penetration of a psychological reading grid. Why is this grammar of individual anxiety taking over, capturing attention, and expressing ecological concern?  

This process is consistent with trends that have been described for several decades: a way of treating social phenomena as psychological phenomena, but also a way of experiencing and expressing these realities that signal the extension of mental health to all sectors of social life. It expresses a shared emotional regime that forms a community and shapes forms of recognition, adherence, and action. 
We will examine the emergence of this category and its success in different discursive spaces. Based on sociological research on the meanings and uses of eco-anxiety by young people who claim to be eco-anxious and by professionals who care for eco-anxious people, we will examine how eco-anxiety operates on two very contemporary registers: that of mental health and that of emotions, which are sometimes intertwined, sometimes divergent. We'll see how eco-anxiety is redrawing the contours and relationships between psychology and politics: making common sense but also relating to sometimes opposed normative and political horizons, explaining the variety of experiences, meanings and uses to which it opens.