Imogen Tyler

Europe is the most rapidly warming continent on Earth. Environmental deterioration accelerated by climate change has a disproportional impact upon working-class bodies and communities. The human harms of this crisis (e.g. deepening poverty and premature death), have been compounded by decades of state-corporate asset-stripping that have degraded the social (e.g. health, housing) and elemental resources (e.g. clean water; breathable air; food and land) that once provided a basic level of security and protection to the most vulnerable. Weaving together research from social and environmental history, the social sciences and the life sciences, this project rethinks the socioenvironmental polycrisis of late capitalism through the prism of historic and contemporary ‘asset-class’ struggles over elemental resources (Swyngedouw & Ward, 2020). Working alongside grassroots community groups, the overarching aim is to advance an elemental sociology that brings “the social” and “the environmental” within the same analytic frame, in order to enable and progress more just and liveable futures.