Seeing the Woods, the blog of The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, published a post, “Why Ecocriticism Needs the Social Sciences (and Vice Versa).” Written by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, W.P. Małecki, and Frank Hakemulder, it argues that more collaboration and synergy between the environmental humanities and social sciences can lead to a better understanding of how compelling narratives are, how they work, and how they affect actual audiences.
Knowing that you need to tell a new story does not always mean that you know what to say, or how to say it. This is the situation we find ourselves in today. Most environmental scholars, thinkers, and activists agree that to respond to the existential socio-ecological challenges we currently face, we need new narratives of who we are, how we are entangled with the rest of the natural world, and how we might think, feel, and act to preserve a stable biosphere and a livable future. But what kinds of stories should we tell? To which audiences? Are some stories more impactful than others? Might some even be counterproductive? Continue Reading.