Klimax Working for the Climate: Through Humor, Play, and the Redefinition of Space

• Main Author: Robert Hamrén
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Linköping University Electronic Press 2014-04-01
• Series: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research
• Subjects: Climate-change activist; Melucci; redefinition of space; emotions; counter-symbols
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146383

This article focuses on the strategies of protest employed by the climate-change activist network Klimax (circa 2007-10). My questions are: What, in their view, was the main threat to our environment? How did they protest against it? The study is based on a close examination of twenty - four protest actions, undertaken during the years 2009-11, as described on the movement's own KLIMAX homepage. I am interested in how the website's narratives and visuals demonstrate the ways in which individiual actions' specific protest strategies challenge the current social order. The analysis of these texts and visuals is based on concepts and theories derived from Cultural Studies, textual analysis and theories of representation, research on New and social resistance movements, emotion sociology and cultural-social approaches to place.