Thinking Beyond Borders: How Can Humanities and Social Sciences Help to Deal with Climate Change Health Hazards in the Twenty-First Century? Outputs of the Transdisciplinary Network “Composing Worlds: Humanities, Well-being and Health in the 21st century”

Abstract

Climate Change (CC) is the most noticeable evidence of the “Metamorphosis of the World” and it is changing regimes. The unpredictability of climate phenomena and their multidimensional impacts on human and environmental health has contributed to making our understanding of the world increasingly difficult. Furthermore, history proved that technoscience alone is not enough to deal with these issues. CC, diseases linked to poverty and human migration, health systems increasingly required by democratic societies, and artificial intelligence, are all technical issues, but also social, which require a broad understanding for creative solutions. A global call is now waking up for the humanities and social sciences visions to deal with the human, and non-human matters raised by CC, namely through the integration of health and sustainability areas. This chapter aims to present and discuss some of the first outputs of the transdisciplinary network “Composing worlds: humanities, well-being and health in the 21st century”, which consists of a network of experts in the humanities and social and health sciences who think about the issues of well-being and health in contemporary technological societies. The methodology used in the first phase of the project was a thematic analysis of an interview with an open answer script, built in a participatory manner by the experts’ network. It was an exploratory research, which used text analysis to identify the key ideas original to each author, and the induction of the corresponding main themes. The themes were then organized by semantic correspondence groups or thematic clusters. Of the nine clusters that emerged, five of them may pave the way for a true discussion on the CC hazards in human and environmental health: (i) Public understanding and post-normal science; (ii) critical thinking and ethics in health; (iii) well-being, health, democracy and social justice; (iv) holistic (cross-disciplinary) approach to health and well-being; and (v) environment, health, sustainability and equity. It is expected that these clusters contribute to discussing how CC has already altered our way of being, living and thinking about the world, and to dealing with the challenges related to CC hazards on health and well-being in the twenty-first century.

Diogo Guedes Vidal and Marina Prieto Afonso Lencastre have equally contributed to this work.