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How to Promote Responsible Conducts Towards the Environment: A Semiotic Cultural Psychological Analysis

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Geo-societal Narratives

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Abstract

Geoethics investigates the multifaceted implications of the Human-Earth interdependence and seeks to portray a general normative framework for promoting people acting ethically towards an environment facing the current anthropogenic global change. Drawing on the Semiotic Cultural Psychological Theory that acknowledges a dynamic notion of culture, this chapter aims to delve into such a fruitful issue contending that the way people respond to the quest for responsible action towards Earth is culturally entrenched. Culture is presented as an ongoing process of sense-making in-between the personal and the social spheres through which individuals interpret their experience. Indeed, three central tenets of the cultural embeddedness of the human experience are discussed: cultural variability, otherness and performativity. According to these premises, the concept of semiotic capital is introduced to describe how social actors can confront their life-in-society in systemic terms valuing the interdependence between the personal and the public sphere. In particular, the likelihood of making ethical action possible would depend on the extent to which individuals interiorise and experience the systemic aspect of life as a vital dimension, namely on the amount of semiotic capital they have access to. Finally, a means for a policy that aims to promote a commitment to sustainability is delineated.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter is based on theoretical and empirical elaborations carried out in the framework of the Re.Cri.Re research project (http://re.cri.re/), granted by the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme in 2015 under grant agreement No 649436.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Alessia Rochira

  2. Department of Clinical and Dynamic Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Sergio Salvatore

Authors
  1. Alessia Rochira
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  2. Sergio Salvatore
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Correspondence to Alessia Rochira .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, NJ, USA

    Martin Bohle

  2. International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), Rome, Italy

    Eduardo Marone

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Rochira, A., Salvatore, S. (2021). How to Promote Responsible Conducts Towards the Environment: A Semiotic Cultural Psychological Analysis. In: Bohle, M., Marone, E. (eds) Geo-societal Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_7

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79028-8

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