Several Methods to Explore Climate Change

Several Methods to Explore Climate Change

‘We don’t care about planet Earth’, scientists asserted recently. Is this true, or is it an exaggeration? Critically appraising scientific information requires knowledge of research. Without some understanding of methodologies and methods, people may accept unwarranted claims made by environmentalists, scientists, politicians or moralists. Be this as it may, deforestation, exploitation of natural resources and disposal of toxic waste have left their imprints on our civilisation. Global warming and ecological disasters have resulted in annihilation anxiety. Climate change has inspired images of an apocalypse and ‘confirmed’ religious, apocalyptic beliefs.

Extraordinary denial on the level of public discourse has not prevented that our collective unconscious absorbs such stories. Models have graphically described the Butterfly Effect, which suggests that small shifts in local ecological systems can amplify into large ecological changes thousands of miles away. Nevertheless, illusions of our superiority over nature are maintained by narcissistic defences. Phantasies of unlimited resources and exploitation of nature without consequences are not easily relinquished.

Therefore, climate change and its denial are important research topics. To get a sense of how widespread this denial is, you could for example devise questionnaires and carry out quantitative surveys. Once you have established its prevalence, qualitative methods could be used to examine unconscious defences. However, the unconscious is a slippery concept that is not easily researched. Accepting that the unconscious is embedded in the syntax of language, it is possible to discern how language instils assumptions into our mind without our awareness, by using Discourse Analysis.

Different versions of Discourse Analysis exist. Critical and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis pay particular attention to history, underlying theory, subjectivity, ideology and power. The political position of you, the researcher, and your critical stance towards climate change, should be evident in the way you elaborate both problems and analyses as historical questions. Use your subjectivity when conducting systematic observations, i.e. data collection. Links can be made between theoretical models, psychoanalytic concepts, such as splitting, projection, projective identification, counter/transference, and culture.

If you would like to explore opinions and beliefs about environmental crises, you could try narrative approaches. Studies using narrative methods have been integrated in psychoanalysis. Familiarise yourself with these. The free association narrative interview has been applied by Lertzman (2012) to explore environmental awareness, alongside in-depth interviews. In its simplest form, Narrative Analysis aims to produce an account of individual life experiences. Narratives have a linear sequence, a beginning, middle and end. So when exploring the effects of climate change, you could focus on the time before an environmental crisis, climate change itself, and/or the hypothesised period afterwards. Alternative narratives and corresponding theories can also be revealed.

If you are interested in the connection between climate change and ill mental health, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis may be useful. It allows you to study lived experiences of climate change. This idiographic approach focuses on an individual’s cognitive, linguistic, affective and physical aspects. When adopting a phenomenological attitude, our habitual, taken-for-granted understanding is put aside so that climate change can show itself in its essence. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis relies on an interpretation process through which you interpret your participants’ meaning-making by making sense of what they tell you. Rigorous analyses go beyond the immediately apparent content.

Bodily experiences of ecological effects can also be examined by conducting longitudinal (spanning many years) studies. They can capture the many effects of global warming and climate change on mental health, but they cannot definitively establish their causes.

To ascertain if discussions about ‘nature being neutral to whatever happens’ are an aberration, and ecological consciousness does nevertheless exist, analyses of communication may be useful. Conversation Analysis is a method that allows you to offer a detailed description of the formal properties of talk. In conversations, the sequences that maintain the order of everyday interaction is unpicked by a close reading of transcripts, which include detailed descriptions of non-verbal communication. You could focus, for example, on how people negotiate taking turns when they speak, and analyse these in naturally occurring conversations. Form of talk, instead of content, is your focus.  Conversation Analysis sits methodologically within the empiricist tradition.

To study ecological consciousness more qualitatively, you could do a Thematic Analysis. In analysing the answers of your participants, you will be able to identify different themes related to their views and experiences of environmental disasters. Themes regarding ecological consciousness are created by grouping together a meaningful set of statements, metaphors or images from your data. Whatever approach you use, your research question determines your methodology. Gaining a clear understanding of methodological issues is an essential requirement in social sciences.

If you are very interested in researching the unconscious, exciting new methods have been developed in psychoanalysis in addition to describing case studies of clinical practice. Unconscious processes can be operationalised. Additionally, several ‘scientific’, socioanalytic methods have been used. For example, elaborating the socio-photo matrix and drawing social dreams. Both participants’ dreams and free associations to photographs are the raw data that enable unconscious processes to surface. When employing such methods, those processes become available for further analyses. Hidden complexities in organisations have been revealed in this way. However, as with most qualitative methods, it is not always possible to draw a strict differentiating line between data collection and analysis.

When examining people’s beliefs regarding pesticides, reverie-informed interviewing could be helpful. It is based on conceptualisations of an unconscious matrix that is formed by transference–countertransference interactions between researcher and participant.

Thematic group discussions, in which participants are asked to explore their un/conscious experiences in relation to pesticides, can also be employed to collect data. In qualitative interviews, scenic understanding, notions of the defended subject and counter/transference, can also be applied. You could use your verbal and emotional associations, that is your scenic understanding, when you analyse interviews. By using mixed methods, you can make a difference to discussions regarding climate change.

Susanne Vosmer, Columnist, s.vosmer@gmail.com

References

Lertzman R (2012) Researching psychic dimensions of ecological degradation: notes from the field. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 17(1): 92–101.

Mathers D (ed.) (2021) Depth Psychology and Climate Change. The Green Book. London: Routledge.

Stamenova K and Hinshelwood RD (eds.) (2018) Methods of Research into the Unconscious. Applying psychoanalytic ideas to social science. London: Routledge.