Abstract
This paper proposes a brief presentation of sociological studies on climate change, suggesting a synthesis of the emergence of this research area, its main contributions to the debate and, in particular, highlighting its interrelations with the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Thus, it intends to contextualize the dossier Climate change, science and society that makes up this issue of Sociologias. This dossier comprises texts by national and international authors, which demonstrate how the issue of climate change has been challenged in different spheres of political action and has been institutionalized, proving to be a privileged theme for the analysis of the continuous reordering of social relations through the interface between scientific knowledge, public policy, and materialities. Therefore, paving the way to the national debate, the dossier summarizes a contribution from the sociological approach to an increasingly pressing theme: the effects of climate change on contemporary social life. The articles gathered here discuss the battles fought on the subject within the different political arenas and allow us to see how the issue of climate change has the power to drive political transformations in various scales and territories. Thus, the texts presented document how the coexistence of paradigms, associated with transformations in the core of the earth sciences, is a unique opportunity for analytical and theoretical elaboration for both sociology and the studies on Science, Technology and Society.
Keywords
environmental sociology; STS; Anthropocene; environmental governance; global warming