Breaking climate justice ‘silence’ in everyday life: The environmentalist killjoy, negotiation and relationship risk

Abstract

The moral and justice dimensions of climate change are uncomfortable and commonly avoided in the conversations of day-to-day UK life. This ‘silence’ impedes the genesis of a public discourse to drive justice-oriented social and political change. Two social realms identified as silence-breaking are social movements and personal relationships, yet the potential of this intersection has yet to be explored. This article applies Goffman’s theories of interaction to a qualitative study of UK-based climate activists to show how silence around climate justice is often a means to avoid relationship conflict, and the ways in which this is negotiated within everyday interactions. Activist participants faced conversational resistance through normative avoidance of climate-related death talk, and from negative environmental activist stereotyping. In efforts to protect relationships while promoting their climate politics, participants backgrounded their activist identity, slowly ‘chipped away’ at climate obstruction through social and sustainable practices, and prioritised humour. Breaking silences required taking relationship risks through radical environmentalist ‘killjoy-talk’: a deliberate, politicised transgression of polite conversation norms. The article reflects on the normativities and loci of power discursively obstructing a moral engagement, and the potential for activists’ practical and discursive strategies to work against these to normalise politicised climate talk.

‘They Talk about the Weather, but No One Does Anything about It’: A Mixed-Methods Study of Everyday Climate Change Conversations

“…There is also limited information about those who do not engage in interpersonal communication about climate change and the perceived barriers to engaging in these conversations. However, Howard [ 12 ] found that some environmentalists do not engage in climate change conversations due to fears of harming relationships. Understanding the content of climate change conversations and barriers to engaging in these conversations may be useful in developing messages and methods to facilitate peer communication about climate change that can lead to meaningful collective climate actions.…”