Middle-class responses to climate change: An analysis of the ecological habitus of tech workers

Abstract

The question of how the digital economy responds to ecological issues has gained salience in recent years. So far, though, social scientists have primarily taken interest in the ecological positionings of tech entrepreneurs. Little attention has been paid to the middle-class fraction of ‘tech workers’ who are responsible for programming, designing, and managing the digital technologies that reconfigure socio-material relations. Based on 52 interviews with data scientists and user experience designers, the article analyzes the ecological habitus of this new professional segment. Four central ecological schemas are identified: (1) managing limited resources, (2) critical techno-optimism, (3) academic concern, and (4) lifestyle struggles. Simultaneously, the article discusses how these four schemas relate to the different forms of capital held by tech workers. This mapping of the ecological habitus of tech workers shows how social relationships with nature are underpinned by class positions. The article thus pursues dual aims, contributing to research on green capitalism as well as to debates on how the middle class relates to climate change.

Introduction

In recent years, digital technologies have increasingly been seen as vehicles for climate change mitigation. Big tech companies and startups alike claim the importance of their technologies to the task of reducing CO₂ emissions (Jaeger, 2022; Lenz, 2021; Pakura, 2020). In the social sciences, this green tech agenda has been discussed as part of ‘green capitalism’, which is generally understood as a system that responds to ecological challenges through market principles and technosolutionist approaches (Fox, 2022; Redclift, 2009; Wright and Nyberg, 2015). ¹ When it comes to climate change, tech companies are regarded as pursuing a strategy of ‘non-disruptive disruption’ (Fairbairn et al., 2022; Goldstein, 2018). This diagnosis is generally based on studies of the ecological brandings of tech entrepreneurs and the companies’ own promotional materials. But what kind of ecological orientations are dominant among the professionals who work behind the scenes of digital capitalism? The dual focus on the shining entrepreneurial class and publicly influential presentations of tech corporations has neglected the ecological schemas of those responsible for practically programming, designing, and managing digital technologies. So-called ‘tech workers’ are technologically influential and represent a substantial portion of the workforce in the digital economy (Dorschel, 2021, 2022b). Moreover, recent unionization efforts, protests, and political campaigns indicate the political power that this digital middle class can enfold (Baca and Greene, 2019; Tan et al., 2023; Tarnoff, 2020). This raises two interconnected questions: what kind of ecological schemas are typical among tech workers, and how these can be accounted for?

This article addresses this lacuna through an inquiry into the ecological habitus of tech workers. Drawing on (Kasper, 2009), the concept of ecological habitus can be understood as referring to ecologically relevant schemas of perception, recognition, and action among individuals. This conceptualization puts forward a value-neutral theorization, distinguishing it from other approaches that narrowly associate the concept with ‘pro-ecological schemas’ (e.g. Carfagna et al., 2014; Kennedy and Givens, 2019). Unlike Kasper (2009), though, my study will emphasize the contradictory character that can shape habitualization processes. For Bourdieu, habitual schemas in general are understood as relatively durable dispositions that constitute a ‘structured structuring structure’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 53). The habitus is conceptualized as the link between structure and agency and is tied to the concepts of multiple forms of capital and of social fields. It can be envisioned as a bundle of schemas incorporated within fundamentally relational social structures (Eversberg et al., 2021: 24). The article deploys this theoretical heuristic without considering actors’ volumes of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital to determine ecological schemas (Boltanski, 2011: 20; Raza, 2022). In some instances, Bourdieu suggests that positions in the context of unequally distributed forms of capital determine actors’ schemas and practices (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 105). In other instances, Bourdieu frames the relationship between these spaces as an empirical question (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 86). Adopting the latter heuristic, objective class positions are understood to generate a ‘space of possibilities’ that makes certain schemas and practices more likely and others almost unthinkable (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 153). As argued by Eversberg et al. (2021: 28), such a non-determinist deployment of Bourdieu is particularly critical for ecological research, given the contradictions and inconsistencies concerning the relationship between ecological schemas and practices.

The present analysis is based on data gathered in 52 qualitative interviews with tech workers. As such, it is ultimately exploratory in nature. An exhaustive understanding of tech workers’ ecological habitus would require additional ethnographic and quantitative research. Furthermore, given the vast range of tech worker professions, I chose to focus only on two groups: data scientists and user experience (UX) designers. Data scientists render and analyze large data sets and are responsible for the coding of algorithms. UX Designers primarily operate using qualitative data and focus on improving the interaction of users with the interface and functions of digital technologies and services. Given the contrasting locations of these two professions within the field of the digital economy, I suggest that similarities can be tentatively considered as characteristics common to tech workers more generally. Interviews were conducted in the United States and Germany. The United States is the leading digital economy in the world and represents a liberal market economy. Germany, however, constitutes the largest digital economy in Europe and can be considered a coordinated market economy (Hall and Soskice, 2001).

Four ecological schemas are identified as constitutive characteristics of the ecological habitus of tech workers across the United States and Germany. These are found to be linked by mechanisms of homology to the class positions of tech workers. Homologies are understood as correspondences between subjective positionings or classifications in the symbolic sphere and resource-dependent objective positions in the sphere of social structure (Bourdieu, 1984: 175; Waitkus and Groh-Samberg, 2019; Westheuser, 2020). I call the first ecologically relevant schema managing limited resources. This schema builds on the basic perception of climate change as a challenge. Tech workers respond to bleak ecological prognoses not with fatalism but with an aspiration to manage resources more wisely. This schema can be accounted for against the backdrop of my interlocutors’ pre-dominantly middle-class backgrounds (see also Neckel et al., 2018). The second ecological schema is termed critical techno-optimism. Tech workers do not cultivate the naïve technosolutionism that is typical of the entrepreneurial class (Morozov, 2013; Nachtwey and Seidl, 2020) but problematize many of the large-scale promises around technological developments such as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) and ‘machine learning’. I interpret this finding as a boundary-making vis-à-vis the upper class. Moreover, I hold it also points to a homology given tech workers’ involvement in micro-class struggles within the ‘system of professions’ (Abbott, 1988; Grusky and Sørensen, 1998).

The two other ecological schemas that I identify – academic concern and lifestyle struggles – are linked less to tech workers’ economic capital than to their cultural and social capital. The schema of academic concern manifests in the articulation of worry about climate change through specialist concepts and abstract expertise. I interpret this ecological schema in the context of tech workers’ high cultural capital. The final ecological schema is that of lifestyle struggles. Tech workers frequently exhibit an inner conflict regarding the environmental footprint of their lifestyles. While this schema indicates distinction processes and may be interpreted in the light of the neoliberal imperative of self-improvement, it also suggests a high estimation of one’s capacity to bring about change in the world. Indeed, it can be interpreted as an instance of the tendency of those with relatively privileged middle-class backgrounds and positions to perceive themselves and their actions as effectual (Eversberg, 2021).

This article thus contributes both to the literature on digital capitalism and green tech (Fox, 2022; Goldstein, 2018; Jaeger, 2022; Pakura, 2020) and to discussions of how the middle class relates to climate change (Eversberg, 2021; Huber, 2022; Neckel et al., 2018). The next part of this article will engage both research fields by offering a more detailed analysis of the socio-ecological embeddedness of tech workers and of their class locations. In a third part of the article, I will elucidate my methods and data, before presenting in a fourth part the empirical analysis of the four ecological schemas and their underlying class logics. The concluding part of this article systemizes the findings and outlines future avenues for research.

A digital middle class in the middle of climate change

The research field around green capitalism has analyzed how digital companies (also referred to as ‘tech companies’), whose business models center on the commercial Internet, are at the heart of an emergent economic order that responds to climate change without deviating from market principles. Redclift (2009: 373) argues that ‘environmental concerns represent not just an opportunity for policy, but an opportunity for capital to employ new technologies in the search for profit’. Goldstein posits that digital companies are carriers of a ‘green spirit of capitalism’ that brings about ‘non-disruptive disruption’ (Goldstein, 2018: 17). Drawing on field work at entrepreneurial incubators and a discourse analysis of popular literature, Goldstein diagnoses a performative logic through which abstract market imperatives are channeled in new capitalist belief systems. Only those digital ecological innovations that promise sizable and rapid returns are likely to receive support (Goldstein, 2018: 117). A number of other scholars involved have made similar arguments on the basis of research into green tech entrepreneurs. Fairbairn et al. (2022), for instance, have studied the dominance of market imperatives among agricultural tech entrepreneurs, while Santini (2017) has provided a highly relevant overview of literature engaging with the diverse forms of ‘ecopreneurship’.

The digital economy is, however, made up of multiple and conflicting social groups (Altenried and Niebler, 2022; Lenz, 2021; Staab and Nachtwey, 2016). While the research on the ecological brandings of tech entrepreneurs has been highly insightful, equating the digital economy with this upper-class grouping risks reproducing the narrative according to which digital technologies are the product of individual masterminds (Irani, 2015: 232). Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1996) concept of social fields, this article posits the digital economy as a social field encompassing a range of conflicting groups with distinctive positions in terms of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. So-called ‘tech workers’ occupy positions in the middle layer of this field (Dorschel, 2022a, 2022b). They do not have the vast economic resources of tech entrepreneurs (or venture capitalists), but they are also more privileged than highly precarious digital laborers such as gig and crowd workers. The tech workers I interviewed in Germany earn on average 73,000 Euros (roughly US$80,000) per annum; tech workers in the United States are paid an average of US$162,000. They manage to earn (upper) middle-class wages, thanks to the demand for the forms of professional expertise that are necessary to encode, design, and manage digital technologies and services, and which are an integral part of tech workers’ cultural capital. Furthermore, tech workers are often educated in international contexts and are spatially mobile, pointing to high social capital in the form of transnational experiences and networks (Dorschel, 2022a). Finally, tech workers also possess relatively high forms of symbolic capital, which manifests in their being idealized as a professional avant-garde: see, for example, classifications of working in tech as ‘sexiest job of the 21^st century’ in the Harvard Business Review (Davenport and Patil, 2012). Interestingly, these professionals often self-classify as ‘workers’ (Tarnoff, 2020).

Given the position of tech workers as an avant-gardist middle-class fraction, an analysis of their ecological habitus promises insights not just for debates on green capitalism but also about middle-class orientations vis-à-vis climate change more generally. ² Drawing on Bourdieu, it will be demonstrated how ecologically relevant schemas of perception, recognition and action are linked to unequal distributions of multiple forms of capital. By shedding light on homologies between the space of schemas and dispositions and the space of socio-structural positions, it will be possible to overcome essentialist explanations of ecological behavior.

Hitherto, mostly quantitative studies exist about the relationship between class positions and ecological orientations. This area of work has established important insights about correspondences between ecological attitudes and socio-structural characteristics. For instance, it has been demonstrated that concern about climate change is positively associated with income and educational levels up to relatively high points (e.g. Fritz et al., 2021: 875). However, it remains underexplored as to what kind of socio-cultural logics and mechanisms account for the association between pro-ecological schemas and (upper) middle-class volumes of economic and cultural capital. Only very few studies exist that address this question (Eversberg, 2021; Huber, 2022; Koehrsen et al., 2020; Neckel et al., 2018). These studies have provided important insights into the class underpinnings of social relationships with nature. They have shown, for instance, that middle-class experiences of self-efficacy and the necessity to carefully invest resources propel pro-ecological schemas. However, none of the existing studies has analyzed actors within the digital economy. This study thus pursues dual aims by contributing to research on green tech as well as to research concerned with the nexus of class and ecology.

Methods and data

This article is based on 52 interviews that were conducted between July 2020 and March 2022. While debate remains ongoing as to the relation between how people present themselves in interviews and what they actually do (Maxwell, 2012), interviews can still be considered the most useful method for uncovering where people live imaginatively and the ways in which they attribute worth (Lamont and Swidler, 2014: 159). The method of interviewing enables a focused exploration of the role of schemas, which can be understood as dispositional attitudes and mental frameworks of actors (Eversberg et al., 2021: 31). Given the vast number of professionals who render digital technologies at Internet-related companies and earn upper-middle-class wages, I focused on two groups of tech workers with distinct positions in the field of tech work: data scientists and UX designers. My exploratory sample comprises 13 data scientists and 13 UX designers in each of two countries: Germany and the United States. The two national field sites were chosen due to their economic relevance: Germany is the leading digital economy in Europe while the United States is the leading digital economy in the world. Furthermore, the two field sites were chosen because they form a contrastive pair of ‘post-industrial economies’: while Germany can be considered a coordinated market economy with a relatively strong welfare state, the United States is a liberal market economy with generally lower taxes and lesser social services (Hall and Soskice, 2001).

I interviewed tech workers at both established tech firms and startups. ³ Out of the 52 individuals I interviewed, 17 identified as female. This gender make-up roughly corresponds with the statistics of the publicly available diversity reports by the big tech companies Facebook, Google and Microsoft, where only between 24.1% and 26.7% of tech roles were occupied by women in 2020. For the recruitment of participants, I relied on multiple strategies. First, I contacted and interviewed a number of data scientists and UX designers through personal connections at both field sites. I then deployed a snowball strategy, asking my interviewees to provide me with further contacts. As well as activating my pre-existing social capital in this way, I contacted tech workers outside my personal network through the online platform LinkedIn. Finally, I recruited participants as a member of a co-working space.

I began the semi-structured interviews with an open question about how participants became involved in tech work. Subsequently, I asked questions concerning their worldviews: for instance, about what bothers them at work and in society. Already at this stage of the interview, many of my interlocutors articulated ecologically relevant schemas. I then asked questions about their everyday work, concerning, for instance, what they do on a daily basis and what characterizes a good tech worker in their opinion. Toward the end of the interview, I asked my interviewees: ‘What is your gut feeling, are future generations going to have it harder or easier in life than your generation?’. A slight majority imagined life for future generations as ‘harder’, which was often followed up with a discussion of climate change. If my interlocutors did not talk about climate change by themselves, I would then ask how they imagine that climate change will impact the world. Furthermore, I asked my interviewees how they believe that climate change can best be tackled and what role digital technologies may play in that task. I concluded the interview with questions about their personal lives and social backgrounds.

The virtual interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, and on average a little more than 1 hour. For the data analysis, I followed the guidelines set out by Maxwell (2012: 116) as well as Keller (2013: 114). Transcripts were read and coded with regard to themes and issues; memos were used to capture initial theoretical thoughts, narrative elements, and general impressions. In a second step of the data analysis, the texts were re-read several times and more interpretative codes were applied. Throughout this process, I took inspiration from the principles of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and abductive research (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). Both programs are oriented toward developing new theories through a back-and-forth between data collection, data interpretation, and theory building.

The most significant limitation of the methods and data used here is my exclusive reliance on interviews. It must be underlined that this study is an explorative one calling for further research into the ecological schemas of tech work. In particular, ethnographic research is needed to compare tech workers’ self-presentation in interviews with what they do in practice. Furthermore, quantitative research is called for to generate a representative account of tech workers’ socio-structural characteristics (including their CO₂ footprints).

Empirical analysis

Managing limited resources

When tech workers talk about climate change, they typically do so by deploying a schema that I will call managing limited resources. This schema builds on the basic perception of climate change as a challenge or task. While tech workers are genuinely worried about the future of the planet, they do not cultivate apocalyptic fears. Climate change is not considered a Doomsday scenario. Rather, tech workers are concerned to find more efficient ways of using limited resources. The following statement by Michael, a data scientist from the United States, is illustrative:

I think we have to use the resources we have more wisely. We have to figure out ways how to move ahead without harming the planet so much. [. . .] to get that done, there’s a fair amount of, again, that technical tool development, some data science, some predictions, some optimization has to be done.

For Michael, climate change is something that calls not for fatalism but for a wiser management of resources. For him, this optimization does not happen overnight but requires disciplined work in several fields. Such a worldview echoes core elements of the protestant ethic that Weber (2002) described in his seminal study of the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’. For Weber, the capitalist regime of accumulation became possible through the combination of a tireless work ethic and an ascetic way of life. Importantly, however, tech workers are supplementing the classic spirit of capitalism with environmental ambitions. Tech workers combine instrumental-rational action with new forms of value-rational action. We can see such a hybridity in the case of Angela, a UX designer from the Germany. She told me about her work:

Yeah, I think it could help combat climate change. I mean, even just the product I’m building could cause you know, a lot less waste to happen in stores. I think technology, especially when it relates to businesses, is really useful. So, figuring out how to run stores in a more efficient manner, try to reduce waste, try to not put products on the shelf that aren’t going to get bought and are just going to have to get thrown away. [. . .] So, it’s just making what we have better and better for society.

Angela appears to derive meaning from her work because it can combat climate change through increasing efficiency. Logistics, in particular, is considered an area where the use of resources can be optimized. Notably, though, Angela does not engage in a problematization of consumption. Only a few of my interlocutors talked to me about reducing consumption. For most tech workers, the ecological schema of improving the management of limited resources is about optimizing the means by which given needs are met. Standards of living at the societal level are not problematized but only questioned in terms of reducing the resources that must be mobilized to meet them. Climate change is not a crisis that ‘disrupts’ the habitus of tech workers; rather, it is met with an attitude of adaptation and optimism. So much is also illustrated in a statement by Emma, a data scientist from the United States: ‘I think we will recover and, and in the end we’ll be okay, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get there’. For tech workers, the future emerges as a sphere of action. Tech workers channel their concerns about climate change into a modus operandi where working on a better deployment of resources will allow avoiding future catastrophe.

Moving beyond a descriptive account, we can identify a correspondence between this ecological schema and the class position of tech workers. Tech workers earn (upper) middle-class incomes and they can be considered to typically have a middle-class background. On the basis of the parental occupations of my interviewees – which showed a high frequency of professions such as teachers, professors, engineers, lawyers, and doctors – I interpret that roughly 80% of the individuals in my sample have either a middle or upper-middle-class background. Given frequent middle-class backgrounds and trajectories, we can consider tech workers to have experience living with, and in their adult lives managing, moderate economic resources. Unlike the upper class, members of the middle class are not equipped with very high volumes of economic capital. Unlike the lower class, they have some resources at their disposal to invest (Groh-Samberg et al., 2014). Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of homology (p. 175), I posit that this specific position inclines them to respond to climate change with an agenda of managing limited resources. While other homologies could also be identified (f.i. related to experiences of self-efficacy), careful investing and disciplined progressing have been diagnosed as middle class–specific dispositions that are incorporated from an early age, and which may be deployed in different situations (Bourdieu, 1984: 318; Groh-Samberg et al., 2014; Neckel et al., 2018). Drawing on this literature (specifically Neckel et al., 2018: 65), it can be posited that when tech workers and other members of the middle class perceive their habitats on fire, they habitually turn to a modus operandi that allowed them to successfully reproduce their middle-class position.

Critical techno-optimism

I shall now turn to the elective affinity between technological imaginations and class positions. In the social sciences, the tech industry is widely considered to run according to an ideology of ‘technosolutionism’ (Morozov, 2013). Members of the industry are categorized as agents who consider digital technologies as solutions for all kinds of social and environmental issues. While this schema appears widespread among tech entrepreneurs and their public presentations (Nachtwey and Seidl, 2020), I find that it provides an inadequate account of the role of digital technologies in the minds of tech workers. Tech workers typically present critical and reflective schemas when it comes to evaluating the potential of digital technologies to address climate change. Eric, for instance, a data scientist from the United States, would be misunderstood as someone who cultivates a naïve technosolutionism. Talking about the potential of digital technologies to address climate change, he first presents techno-optimistic views, but goes on to highlight the greater importance of policy changes:

I think there’s definitely a lot of value to it, and a lot of like, good innovators. I think we will all look back and say that, whatever you think of Elon Musk, he will have had a net positive impact in terms of global efforts to reduce the impact of emissions from cars and such. I feel like innovation is going to be key and all tech workers can contribute to that in one way or another. But the real, you know, what really needs to happen are like policy changes. And that’s the harder part. Like, this isn’t a problem that we can innovate our way out of.

For Eric, digital technology has its role to play in the struggle against climate change. He is supportive of the ecological ambitions of tech entrepreneurs and predicts a greater public appreciation of their efforts in the future. At the same time, though, Eric sees limits to the potential of digital technologies to solve the issue of climate change. For him, policy changes are the more important and difficult wheel to turn. Like many other of my interviewees, Eric is a techno-optimist without being a technosolutionist; that is, without believing in endless powers of digital technologies. Tech workers typically take the middle ground when it comes to evaluating the potential of green tech initiatives. This is further illustrated by Moritz, a data scientist from Germany, who told me ‘tech is super important and plays one of the most important roles besides politics’ in addressing climate change. However, he also expressed concern, saying ‘I’m pretty sure we won’t reach the goals we should reach. So when we’re talking about 1.5 degree, global warming, and these kind of things, I think we won’t reach them’.

It is important to note that the critiques advanced by tech workers do not raise the issue of democratic politics in relation to technological development concerning climate change adaption. Tech workers do not problematize the creation of digital technologies in exclusive and privileged contexts, where women, People of Color, and Indigenous groups are highly underrepresented (Benjamin, 2019). There is a neglect of the matter that ‘resource limitations may raise entirely different issues about what constitutes viable modes of adaptation’ (Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011: 522); deliberation on more socially just distributions of limited resources does not exist. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize and take seriously the contours of a reflective relationship to the digital means of production. Unlike existing accounts of the ‘coding elite’ (Burrell and Fourcade, 2021: 217f.), I find that tech workers do not generally perceive social and environmental issues as nails, and digital technologies as an all-purpose hammer. Some tech workers even problematize specific technological developments as being counterproductive for struggles against climate change. Jennifer, a data scientist from the United States, told me about crypto mining:

I think there’s also the bad [digital technologies]. You know, crypto sounds like a good idea because it allows for, you know, this more decentralized idea of money that goes across borders, but the amount of fossil fuels it takes to mine that stuff is insane. So, there’s also a problem there.

The power of digital technologies is far from unquestioned among tech workers. Even though an interview context may activate reflective capacities, it is clear that the belief system of technosolutionism does not constitute a doxa in the field of the digital economy. Instead, it seemed to me that displaying one’s own distance vis-à-vis the grander claims for digital technologies is necessary (at least among tech workers) to be taken seriously. Even though some of my interlocutors hold relatively high hopes for the capacity of digital technologies in particular to address climate change, this does not necessarily lead to an absence of skepticism or critique.

How do class positions account for this distancing from a naïve technosolutionism? By addressing tech workers’ relation to other classes within and beyond the digital economy, two relevant homologies may be identified. First, it can be interpreted that tech workers have a class interest in highlighting the limits of digital technologies because it points to the human labor that is necessary to develop and manage digital technologies. Tech entrepreneurs often present digital technologies as operating on an ‘autonomous’ or ‘unsupervised’ basis (Irani, 2015: 232); they hold a class interest in branding digital products, like AI, as the output of individual masterminds and in downplaying the importance of human labor. Conversely, by highlighting the limits of digital technologies, tech workers draw attention to the importance of their work and their class jurisdiction. So even though other professional groups may also foster a critical techno-optimism (see Wallhagen and Magnusson, 2017 on urban design professionals), the convergence of this schema with tech workers’ specific class position brings about a distinctive homology. Second, tech workers may be considered to engage in micro-class struggles between professions (Grusky and Sørensen, 1998). Professions can be understood as high-status occupations that must continuously fight for their place in the ‘system of professions’ (Abbott, 1988), which can be understood as a specific terrain within the ‘field of power’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 104). The occupations of data science and UX-design are unconsolidated professions in this ecology of struggles. Their knowledge expertise is in high demand but is not institutionally secured (Dorschel, 2021, 2022a). There are no established professional associations, nor are there mandatory educational programs that must be completed to become a UX designer or data scientist. This suggests that informal mechanisms play an especially prominent role in securing occupational closure. The moral code underpinning the ecological schema of critical techno-optimism allows tech workers to establish habitual entry-barriers and to shrug off the negatively connotated character slate of ‘the nerd’ (Kendall, 1999). Both aspects can be considered advantageous in struggles vis-à-vis competing professionals who rely less on moral presentations, such as statisticians (Abbott, 1988: 146ff.). Of course, these two social structural factors do not determine the ecological orientations of tech workers. Rather, we must consider them as forming a constellation in which the schema of critical techno-optimism gains strategic value. In the next section, I will turn to schema of academic concern and explore its strategic role.

Academic concern

To understand how tech workers relate to the eco-social phenomenon of climate change, it is important to delve deeper into their ‘climate change imaginaries’ (Luke, 2015; Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011). Even though tech workers perceive climate change as a challenge that can be addressed through the better management of limited resources or critical techno-optimist practices, there remain deep-rooted worries about environmental changes in the near- and mid-term future. Interestingly, these worries are often articulated using academic concepts. The way that many tech workers express concern about climate change is through abstract expertise and knowledge concepts. Eric, for instance, told me:

What we know about how climate change works is like, it’s a very delayed system. Like the changes now will have impacts which are felt decades down the line [. . .] It seems like what will happen with climate change will be how these collective action problems usually pan out, which is that it will get to a critical point where, because our leaders’ motivations are all like very short term, it’s only once we get to a point where like those short term motivations tend to incentivize action, will there be large scale collective action.

Eric worries about climate change in an abstract way. He talks about climate change as a ‘collective action problem’, which is a classic concept in economics and other academic disciplines to describe situations in which individuals would all benefit from cooperation but fail to do so due to conflicting (short-term) interests (Hardin, 2015). Moreover, Eric seems to consider himself as in some way part of an expert community by using the phrase ‘what we know about how climate change works’. Such an identification as expert was especially pronounced among members of the data science profession, whose quasi-academic job title echoes such articulations. In a somewhat different fashion, I was able to locate the mobilization of academic concepts and semantics among UX designers to express concern about climate change. Cameron, a UX designer from the United States, told me:

I think we’re heading for colder winters and hotter summers. We will probably see more migration from the south to the north, which also means more populism here. Rich people though will start to feel the negative aspects way later. The problem is that we’re getting climate change on top of a decaying system.

While Cameron does not deploy very abstract academic concepts, he clearly draws on academically established knowledge to elaborate on the socio-ecological consequences of climate change. For him, environmental developments are connected to changes in migration, politics, and economic inequality. His perception of society as a ‘decaying system’ is in line with the way that some sociologists speak about their object of analysis.

Multiple interpretations are possible to account for these ecological schemas. I want to focus on the high cultural capital of tech workers, given that the schema of academic concern aligns homologically with the specific educational backgrounds of tech workers. Out of my 52 interviewees, 51 held at least a bachelor’s degree, many also undertook master’s studies, and some even PhDs. They possess high volumes of cultural capital compared with class fractions with similar volumes of economic capital. This strong academic profile runs counter to prominent discourses that have portrayed the industry as one where anyone can make it (Davenport and Patil, 2012). We may, then, consider the elaborate ways that tech workers express concern about climate change as a mechanism of ecological distinction. By demonstrating their knowledge and expertise while problematizing environmental developments, tech workers present moral and cultural capital simultaneously. Ecological schemas, again, must be considered in the context of differential access to resources. At the same time, however, tech workers did not strike me as actors who very deliberately seek to improve their status. The utilization of knowledge concepts to relate to climate change appears as common sense rather than as deliberate acts of creating symbolic boundaries. Drawing on Foucault (1980), I consider it most useful to grasp this form of ecological distinction as a ‘strategy without strategists’ (p. 51).

Lifestyles and inner struggles

Analyzing the ecological habitus of tech workers also requires addressing their lifestyles. When talking to tech workers about their leisure activities and tastes, I found a schema of inner struggle to be most characteristic. This struggle manifests in an array of implicit and explicit reflections about the ‘right’ ecological way of life. For instance, many interviewees signaled awareness that their intensive traveling conflicts with their displayed environmental consciousness. Moritz, for instance, a data scientist from Berlin, cultivates self-imposed ‘restrictions’ to find a balance between his lifestyle preferences and his ecological impact:

So, when I see flights, I see hey, you can balance your CO2 emissions now if you donate two Euros. I’m not fully sure how this works but I believe it, maybe because I want to believe it. So, I do this basically every time. [. . .] And then, smaller restrictions, like within Germany, I don’t fly anymore, these kinds of things. If I go to Poland or Amsterdam, for example, I take the train even though it’s a little uncomfortable. So, I’m trying to find a balance of not doing things if it’s still feasible.

Moritz engages in intense inner debates about his lifestyle. He seeks to find a balance between his lifestyle preferences and his ecological footprint. At times, he is even explicit about having struggles with his inner ecological consciousness:

Something which lets me feel bad [is that] I’m still not a full vegetarian. So, I like eating meat, I’m giving my best to reduce it as much as possible, but I’m still not fully vegetarian. So, I’m betraying myself there already a bit.

Moritz arguably perceives himself as a split subject, with one moral and one immoral self. At times, he seems less concerned with climate change and more concerned with staying authentically connected to certain values and principles. Such a modus vivendi is also presented by Jennifer, a data scientist from San Francisco, who told me:

[S]tarting in undergrad, I was vegan for like four years. I’m no longer vegan anymore. But that was one of the things I tried to do to you know, combat climate change. Now that I’m here, I mean, I chose to live where I live one because it was nice, because it’s by the ocean, but two, it’s a mile from the office, so I don’t even have to drive. So, I just walk or bike to the office, which is really nice. I try to you know, use reasonable things. I cook at home. Little things here and there that I try to implement in my life. I could be better than I am. But I guess I try the best with what I have for now.

Arguably, Jennifer’s expression of inner struggles regarding the right ecological way of life can be understood as a morally underpinned form of eco-distinction. Nevertheless, the presentation of a split inner self by Jennifer and others struck me as genuine even if distinctive. In a way, both Moritz and Jennifer can be described as taking up the role of an inspector or judge when reflecting on their leisure activities and tastes. Placing high importance on individual action vis-à-vis climate change, they constantly inspect and judge their lifestyles against principles of the right ecological way of life. Like many other of my interviewees, Moritz and Jennifer aspire to be ‘good’ subjects through eco-technologies of the self such as monitoring one’s carbon footprint.

This ecological way of life is connected to class positions in two important ways. First, the ideal of self-improvement cultivated by many tech workers connects to their middle-class backgrounds in that it builds on a relatively high estimation of one’s capacity to bring about change in the world. The inner struggle about the ecological impact of one’s lifestyles presupposes a perception of oneself and one’s actions as highly effectual. This estimation must be considered an outflow of biographical experiences made in relatively privileged positions (Eversberg, 2021). Second, and relatedly, tech workers’ ecological lifestyle struggles indicate that environmental responsibility is strongly understood through the neoliberal regime of self-improvement (Bröckling, 2015). While tech workers deviate from the neoliberal figures of the ‘entrepreneurial self’ or the ‘homo oeconomicus’ through their social critiques and demands for social policy changes, they remain attached to principles of individual responsibility and self-improvement when evaluating lifestyles. This finding connects to class relations in the sense that it has been shown that middle-class members find themselves more at ease with cultivating neoliberal principles than members of lower classes (Friedman and Laurison, 2019: 133).

Conclusion

This article has contributed to the understanding of field- and class-specific modes of relating to climate change. Hitherto, research on ‘green tech capitalism’ has mostly focused on the ecological schemas of tech entrepreneurs. This has overshadowed the role of the tech workers, who are responsible for professionally encoding, designing, and managing the digital technologies that permeate socio-ecological relations. Based on 52 interviews, I have delineated four widespread ecological schemas of this digital middle class: (1) managing limited resources, (2) critical techno-optimism, (3) academic concern, and (4) lifestyle struggles. Furthermore, I have unearthed homologies between tech workers’ subjective orientations and their class positions. Contributing to the research on the nexus of class and ecology, I have argued that there are correspondences between pro-ecological schemas and middle-class positions.

With regard to the field of the digital economy, my research informs us that ‘green tech capitalism’ is not as monolithic as current research suggests. Tech workers are no disciples of their bosses: they demonstrate manifold reflexive and critical capacities. They articulate an honest longing to contribute to a more ecological world. Their critical techno-optimism especially indicates potential to move beyond a green capitalist system of ‘non-disruptive disruption’. However, this habitual potential is currently not translated or mobilized into widespread collective forms of action. The heterodox schemas of tech workers remain tied to corporate solutions and individualizing lifestyle principles. The ecological habitus of tech workers is contradictory in this regard.

Furthermore, my study contributes to research on how ecological orientations correspond with class positions. I have unearthed a number of mechanisms that account for the elective affinities between pro-ecological schemas and middle-class volumes of different forms of capital. These insights may allow moving forward alternative communications of environmental issues. My findings indicate that ecological discourses oscillating around a more efficient management of resources, academic and moral concepts, individual responsibilities, or the promise of self-effectuality resonate especially with middle-class segments but less with lower-class segments. Developing democratic politics of livable futures will require to take differential class standpoints more into account (see also Champagne, 2020).

A central limitation of this study is that tech workers’ social relationships with nature were only addressed through ecologically relevant schemas. There is a need for a more exhaustive study of the ecological habitus of tech workers, involving ethnographic research as well as representative quantitative studies of their socio-structural characteristics (including their carbon footprints). In terms of class analysis, this study calls for research into the ecological schemas of other social classes, including other professional groups and middle-class fractions. Existing research has already indicated the cultivation of worldviews related to ‘critical technooptimism’ among urban design professionals (Wallhagen and Magnusson, 2017), as well as the presence of ecological perspectives such as ‘managing limited resources’ and ‘academic concern’ among teachers (Lwo et al., 2017). Exploring this further and studying the interplay of schemas and capitals among other groups would allow gaining a more comparative understanding of eco-social class dynamics. Ideally, future research along this line would also engage with the nexus of ecological schemas and different forms of capital in the Global South. This would provide insights into how intersecting relations of domination must be considered if widespread support for appropriately scaled measures against climate change is to be secured.