Volume 1, Issue 3, October 2011, 155-166 International Review of Social Research The Response of the Hermeneutic Social Sciences to a ‘Post Carbon World’ Michael REDCLIFT • King’s College, London Abstract: Sociology has taken a ‘back seat’ in much of the debate, within policy and social science circles, about ‘post-carbon’ societies, in which our dependence on hydrocarbons is signifcantly reduced. The low profle of sociology does not refect a lack of relevance, but rather an inability to follow up on the debates being generated in several congruent areas, including geography, international relations and particularly environmental economics. Sociology has much to contribute to the discussion of societal alternatives, not least in the work being undertaken on utopias and governance. It is suggested that sociologists can enhance the role of the social science disciplines, and that of sociology in particular, by re- engaging in the wider discussions, lending a hermeneutic understanding to the current policy debates about responding to climate change. Keywords: post carbon sociology, sustainable development Introduction The environment poses real problems for the social sciences, especially the growing sense of urgency surrounding climate change (Rayner and Malone, 1998; Cock and Hopwood, 1996; Dyson, 2005; Altvater 2007; Brunnengraber, 2007; Lever-Tracy, 2008). This is partly because some disciplines, among them sociology, have longstanding diffculties with policy agendas (with which they often co-evolved historically, and to which © University of Bucharest, October 2011 NTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH I IRSR • Email: michael.r.redclift@kcl.ac.uk. Michael Redclift is currently Professor of International Environmental Policy in the Department of Geography at King’s College, London. In 2006 he was the frst recipient of the ‘Frederick Buttel Award’, from the International Sociological Association, for ‘an outstanding contribution to international scholarship in environmental sociology’. He was the frst Director of the Global Environmental Change programme of the ESRC between 1990 and 1995. Between 1973 and 1997 he was at Imperial College at Wye, ultimately as Professor of Environmental Sociology. He has coordinated research grants for the European Commission (FM IV and V) and helped initiate the TERM programme of the European Science Foundation. In addition he has evaluated the research programmes of the Norwegian Research Council (RCN), the Netherlands Research Council (NRP), and other European research initiatives, including the Tyndall Centre in the UK. His research on the production and consumption relations under the ESRC/AHRC Programme ‘Cultures of Consumption’, was published in 2004 by Taylor and Francis in New York as Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste. He has completed (2006) a major comparative study of frontier societies and their relations with the natural environment for MIT Press: Frontiers: Histories of Civil Societies and Nature.