Abstract
In this dissertation, I conducted an 18-month ethnography of climate activism, focusing on Sunrise Movement activists in a Northeastern city in the United States. In doing so, I unpack how young climate activists who mobilize in a Northeastern part of the United States experience climate change. This means centering how they express that climate change feels to them. I argue that emotional culture – in this case, an emotional culture of cultivated hope – structures these young climate activists’ emotional responses to climate change. In the case of the emotional culture of cultivated hope, these young climate activists can express a whole spectrum of emotions, including fear, despair, anxiety, joy, hope, and excitement with their fellow activists, and those feelings are validated. Nevertheless, sharing these emotions is the start of emotional processing. To fully embrace and fit into the culture of cultivated hope, activists take fear, anger, and sadness, channel them into action, and reframe them using hope. These expectations mean that while anger, fear, and sadness are permissible, these young climate activists must manage them in the culture of cultivated hope. I take this a step further by exploring the ways storytelling as a process of social transaction shapes and is shaped by the emotional culture of cultivated hope. I argue that social interactions that happen in collective action spaces are part of what shapes emotional culture and are simultaneously shaped by the culture itself. I detail how these activists learn to tell and rehearse emotional stories about their climate activism. I also explore the ways they reframe these stories to better reflect emotional norms. These practices reinforce cultivated hope and highlight the connections between storytelling, emotions, and culture. I conclude this dissertation with programmatic and curricular suggestions for supporting the development of resilient climate leaders and recommendations for how we engage with emotions in climate spaces, particularly in Higher Education.