Social scientists and historians commonly describe the boom decades
after the Second World War in Europe and the Western World as the
“Trente Gloriseuses” (Jean Fourastié) or the “Golden Age” (Eric
Hobsbawm). The rosy picture of rising affluence, social security,
emancipation and liberalization has often served as a normative foil to
criticize economic, social, and political developments since the 1970s.
From an environmental perspective, however, the decades of the economic
boom appear in a strikingly different light, namely as the Great
Acceleration which propelled humanity into the Anthropocene (Paul J.
Crutzen). In this seminar, we will examine the changes of institutions,
infrastructures and life-styles that both cause climate change and make
it difficult to limit it and tackle its consequences. In particular, we
will focus on the emergence and spread of energy-intensive life-styles
and (auto-)mobility.
- Kursverantwortliche/r: Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Graf