ABSTRACT
Culture and emotions are central in organizing how people respond to environmental risk. This chapter presents case studies from the US and Norway on how people respond to environmental threats such as climate change challenges the commonly held idea that people either don’t know or don’t care about shifting to sustainability. Amongst the populations we studied, many people have access to enormous amounts of information about environmental risk. But the logic of their pathways is shaped by the emotions that information incited, rather than the knowledge itself. Further, which actions were deemed “logical” was a product of cultural worldviews in which people were immersed. In many cases, the cultural pathways that would allow people to move towards more sustainable organizations of material life are blocked. New ones must be constructed, but they must allow for the sense of emotional wellbeing that comes from an integrated, continuous social world. This, then, is the ultimate task for designers: to build bridges from old ways of being to a new one. The bridges we build must be accessible in the context of existing cultural norms, emotion norms, and they must account for the deep desire for a sense of continuity in everyday life. These bridges must, at the very least, be secure. But ideally, they are also beautiful, and pleasurable to cross.
