Abstract
Based on two qualitative case studies undertaken in Switzerland, this article compares the positioning of Climate Strike activists and construction workers on questions of climate change, so as to analyse the impact of work practices on environmental orientations. Building on a praxeological approach, the article argues that communities of practice in workplaces and educational institutions influence environmental orientations. Everyday practice in schools and universities fosters the scientific environmental knowledge that is central to the orientations of climate activists. By contrast, the practice of construction workers inculcates an embodied environmental knowledge which accompanies an orientation that takes environmental problems as not primarily a question of conservation, but rather as inherently linked to workplace matters. By way of conclusion, the article argues for an expanded notion of environmental concerns, beyond the acceptance of scientific facts on ecological crisis and towards embracing the embodied environmental knowledge more broadly prevalent among manual workers.
Introduction
There is a fundamental puzzle in research about environmental concern. On the one hand, there is broad scientific consensus that working-class people bear the brunt of ecological crises (for an overview see Bell, 2020). On the other hand, research of public opinion consistently identifies large segments of the working class, especially in ‘low-skilled’ technical jobs, as indifferent or even hostile to environmentalism (Eversberg, 2020; Fritz and Koch, 2019; Kenny, 2021; Rubik et al., 2021). Hochschild (2016: 245) even argues that ‘[t]he more at risk a person is to exposure to hazardous waste, […] the less likely a person was to be worried about it.’ According to the German Federal Environmental Agency, only the ‘critical creative milieu’, i.e. academics who work ‘creative’ jobs, are likely to develop fully fledged environmental concern (Umweltbundesamt, 2017). If this were true, it would be almost impossible to achieve social majorities in favour of climate protection, as the ‘critical creative milieu’ comprises merely 13 per cent of the German population (ibid.). Yet there is good reason to doubt the prevailing assumptions.
It is a fundamental paradox of environmental sociology that environmental concern correlates only very weakly to environmental action (Kenny, 2021). Moreover, the dominant notion of environmental concern might itself be problematic. It is often identical with knowledge and acceptance of scientific facts about the ecological crisis, making ‘listen to the science’ the battle cry of the climate movement (Jamison, 2010; Pohlmann et al., 2021). This orientation is pronounced in much of the symbolic communication of the climate movement. The most recognisable of its symbols is likely the hockey-stick curve, tracking globally warming temperatures. Another is the number 350 ppm, which is the maximum limit on the atmospheric concentration of CO2 allowing for a stable climate; it is the inspiration for the name of one of the largest environmental NGOs, 350.org. Finally, climate stripes, a series of coloured stripes organised from blue to red and representing the temporal development of the Earth's climate are often integrated into the insignia used by Activist groups like Scientists for Future . Academics and university students are remarkably overrepresented in the climate movement (de Moor et al., 2021; Porta and Portos, 2021, Schaupp et al., 2024), indicating that those discursive devices of scientific environmental knowledge may not be as widely disseminated in non-academic milieux. Yet it would be presumptuous to conclude from this fact an absence of environmental concern among these social groups. Rather, they should be expected to develop alternative forms of environmental awareness and concern that are suitable to their daily practice - as is also the case with academics .
The present article focuses on this
Climate activists and construction workers represent two particularly well-suited groups for pursuing the above research questions. Construction workers fall under the category of ‘low-skilled’ technical workers that opinion research would expect to feel the lowest level of environmental concern. Yet they are among those who are most strongly affected in the course of their work by the effects of climate change (ILO, 2019). Climate activists, by contrast, are by definition the social group demonstrating the classical, unalloyed form of environmental concern, as defined above. Construction workers and climate activists are also parties in a central conflict around the environment in Switzerland today. The construction industry is responsible for roughly 25 percent of the country's CO2 emissions. This has led to several instances of environmental protest. In 2022, for instance, climate activists occupied a Holcim cement pit near Eclépens and a forest in the canton of Aargau, where the corporation had planned to enlarge one of its mines. The CS furthermore demands a moratorium on all new concrete buildings (Climate Strike, 2021). However, construction is not merely a major polluter; it is also among the industries that is predicted to suffer the greatest harms due to climate change, given the nature of the labour process, which consists of physically demanding work conducted outdoors. Construction work is therefore highly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as snow, rain, thunderstorms, and heat above all. Exposure to excessive heat levels entails not only a decrease in productivity, but can lead to heatstroke and other serious health complications (ILO, 2019).
At first glance, one major difference between the two groups seems to be that the first group is constituted by their work, while the second is constituted by a common politics. Yet research has demonstrated that FFF is not just a youth movement, but one mainly consisting of grammar school and university students (de Moor et al., 2021; Porta and Portos, 2021, Schaupp et al., 2024). Our student respondents do not perceive themselves as workers, but rather understand their studies as a component of their career development, and as a condition for securing their future desired jobs. In this sense, education must be considered an essential part of the working life trajectory as it is not as an end in itself but an integral prerequisite for the activities by which the students will earn a living later on (Spittler, 2001). From a praxeological 1 perspective, education functions primarily as a means of differentiation in the social division of labour (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). This differentiation shapes work-related identities even before individuals enter their respective professions, because education serves as a ‘secondary socialization’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). This article, accordingly, combines approaches from environmental sociology and the sociology of work through a theory of practice lens so as to better grasp the practices underlying differing environmental orientations.
The first section of this article reviews existing literature on environmental and work-related orientations and sketches a provisional heuristic of ‘environmental orientations at work’. The second section treats the paper's methods of data collection and analysis, and then accounts for the case selection. Subsequent sections present the major difference in the orientation of climate activists and construction workers: scientific environmental knowledge (section three), and embodied environmental knowledge (section four). Section five discusses the empirical results against the backdrop of the literature. The concluding section argues for an expanded notion of environmental concern that is not limited to the stance that people take regarding scientific facts about ecological crises, but also takes seriously embodied environmental knowledge. The latter is important not only analytically but also in practical terms for fostering broader alliances in the aim of achieving a social-ecological transformation.
Environmental orientations at work
This section reviews the literature on the role of work practices in shaping environmental orientations in order to provide an analytical lens for the comparison between CS and CW orientations. Early environmental sociology was already profoundly interested in the relational and epistemic structure of workplaces. One of the founders of the sub-discipline, Duncan (1964), emphasised the importance of such structures while simultaneously highlighting how they scale up to a broader, politico-economic level. Marxist approaches to environmental sociology focus on the politico-economic register of work when conceptualising it in terms of class, which they use as the central predictor of environmental orientation (Burkett, 1999; Huber, 2017). Management research, by contrast, deals with the connection of work and environmental orientation principally in terms of how organisations can encourage ‘organizational citizenship behaviour directed towards the environment’ (Ciocirlan, 2017; Norton et al., 2015).
Praxeological approaches have criticised the latter for its overly individualistic and rationalistic conceptualisations. They argue that environmental action does not result from individual rational choice but from a collectively shared habitus, shaped by social institutions, norms and infrastructures (Hards, 2011; Hargreaves, 2011; Shove et al., 2015). Such a theory of practice has allowed Eversberg (2020, 2021) to analyse the relation of different environmental ‘mentalities’ to class positions within a Bourdieusian social field. Eversberg draws mainly on data from opinion research and social structure analysis, but his results show that labour market demands for flexibility and self-optimisation carry important implications for environmental orientation. Fritz and Koch (2019) have produced even more concrete results regarding the relevance of work practices for environmental orientation: managers are more likely to reject welfare and climate policies, while socio-cultural professionals show the highest rates of acceptance of both climate and welfare policies, and ‘low-skilled’ manual workers evince negative attitudes towards climate policies along with average support for social welfare. These approaches reveal statistical correlation between work and environmental orientation, but do not explain the interaction itself.
Work is a core aspect of modern societies and it is connected to individual outlooks and values by way of institutions (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Wenger (1999) argues that it is specifically in ‘communities of practice’ in workplaces where people develop a shared repertoire of resources such as experiences, stories or means of addressing problems. This principle also applies to environmental orientations. In this sense, Siegmann (1985: 105) concludes in his study of trade unionists in Germany and the US, that the ‘nature and circumstances of work’ are a decisive factor for the environmental orientations of employees before indicating that further research on the topic is needed. Representing the praxeological viewpoint, Oppermann et al. (2018) also call for a more systematic account of the role of work practices for the formation of environmental orientations.
All of the foregoing indicates the necessity of combining approaches from environmental sociology and the sociology of work. The latter field has approached environmental questions predominantly through analyses of trade union policy (Bell, 2020; Hampton, 2015; Räthzel et al., 2021). Far fewer studies have addressed the labour process itself, with most of them focusing on high-emission sectors, which are affected by environmental protection policies. This scholarship has identified a complex and contradictory position of employees in these sectors, most of whom are cognizant of the ecological crisis but are suspicious of government strategies towards a green transition and resent being assigned the role of ‘climate villains’ (Houeland and Jordhus-Lier, 2022; Newman and Humphrys, 2020; Wright et al., 2022). Other approaches argue that reproduction work, broadly defined, gives rise to an ethics of care that includes nonhuman nature, thus underlining not only the relevance of work for environmental orientations but also their gendered dimensions (Barca, 2020; Salleh, 2010).
In the sociology of work, the concept of ‘work orientations’, is an important heuristic for analysing the connection between labour processes and normative stances. It is used to analyse work-related moral-political attitudes and practices (Hürtgen, 2021; Menz, 2021). Macro-level analysis has used the term to understand the differences in work-related attitudes across different groups of employees (Goldthorpe et al., 1969). Oesch (2006) argues that ‘work logics’ are an important factor in the formation of political and moral orientations. He shows how work logics influence employees’ personal and political views. But the relation between the structures of practice at work and political orientation is not unidirectional but reciprocal (Kohn, 1990; Wright et al., 2012). For environmental questions, this means that even in a structurally unsustainable world of work, people can develop environmental orientations evolving out of their workplace practices and that are potentially transformative.
Research into the personal resources on which people draw for sustainable practice in their work has focused on formal environmental knowledge and skills (for overviews see Bianchi, 2020; Consoli et al., 2016). In this context, the main question to be posed is whether knowledge acquired during job training or the course of work itself confers ‘climate literacy’, thus enabling more sustainable work and respective orientations (Azevedo and Marques, 2017; Clarke et al., 2024). While these approaches emphasise credentialed knowledge acquired through formal education and training, all labour processes rely on informal, tacit and embodied knowledge gained in the activity of work itself (Warhurst and Thompson, 2006). Such tacit knowledge has an important environmental dimension, as working bodies are the ‘infrastructures’ of a social metabolism with nature (Andueza et al., 2021). White (1996), for instance, argues that manual workers acquire a specific form of experiential environmental knowledge, which differs fundamentally from scientific knowledge. First, it is embodied rather that abstract; and second, it does not romanticise nature but accompanies a powerful awareness of local environmental problems. A study by Heine and Mautz (1989) – for which 170 German industrial workers at highly polluting chemical plants were interviewed – illustrates this well. In the interviews, workers developed an environmental critique of current production systems based on a ‘critical technology optimism’ (ibid. 202–6). This stance stemmed from workers’ extensive knowledge of the production process and thus their capacity and legitimacy in subjecting its harmful elements to critique. Such technical working knowledge need not be the formalised knowledge of engineers; it also includes the embodied understanding employed in working situations, such coping with difficult or recalcitrant machines (cf. Berner, 2008).
From this literature review, we can draw a preliminary praxeological heuristic of ‘environmental orientations at work’. The literature shows primarily that working practices contribute considerably to people's normative orientations, including those regarding environmental issues. These orientations, secondly, appear to be related to the type of knowledge required by the concrete labour processes, meaning that both formal qualification and embodied knowledge must be accounted for in any analysis of work-related environmental orientation.
Methods
The explorative nature of the research questions as well as the praxeological approach to environmental concern itself requires a qualitative research design. This analysis is therefore based on a total of 45 semi-structured interviews conducted between August 2019 and September 2023. The interviews are divided into two case studies and follow a comparative design (Yin, 2003). The first case consists of 23 interviews with activists from the Swiss climate movement or ‘climate strike’ (CS). Potential participants were recruited in two ways. First, participants could leave their contact details for an interview through an open call on an online survey conducted as part of the prior study on the Swiss Climate Strike (Schaupp et al., 2022). Secondly, these participants were asked for recommendations for further interview partners. A large and diverse pool of potential interviewees was compiled as a result. From this pool, we drew a sample based on several categories relevant to the research questions: we first sampled for occupation, recruiting 11 university students, six grammar school pupils, one scientist, and four subjects in non-academic occupations. The distribution reflects the overrepresentation of university and grammar school students in the movement (cf. de Moor et al., 2021; Porta and Portos, 2021, Schaupp et al., 2022). Respondents were then selected from different political wings of the relatively heterogenous movement. It was important for sampling purposes to recruit only activists who were heavily engaged in the movement so as to avoid any misrepresentation of it as reflected by marginal elements. We then, in a third stage of selection, sampled for variance of geographical regions across Switzerland. The gender ratio was balanced. The age range was between 16 and 30. These characteristics correspond roughly to the social composition of the climate movement as identified by previous studies.
The second case consists of 22 interviews with construction workers (CW). First, we conducted five expert interviews (not included in the sample analysed here) with trade union officials and industry experts in order to identify the relevant characteristics of the industry and provide us with contacts. Secondly, we recruited potential respondents at two national union protest events. Both groups were asked for further contacts. This generated a diverse pool of potential respondents from across Switzerland. From this, we selected 11 union members and 11 non-members, as we expected union membership to influence respondents’ stance on environmental questions. Two respondents consider themselves part of the climate movement. We chose only participants who work outdoors in order to account for experience with weather. We drew a sample consisting of masons, crane operators, carpenters, street builders, foremen and workers lacking specialist training. As CW is very much male-dominated (Ness, 2012), only two of the 22 workers are women. The age range was between 18 and 68. CW also employs many migrant workers, which is why 10 of the respondents fall under this category (see appendix 1 and 2 for tables on the interviews composing the two cases).
Data collection followed the method of the comprehensive interview (Kaufmann, 2011). This method emphasises openness towards and comprehension of respondents’ narratives. This means that the interview guide is restricted to few broad questions on the stance respondents take towards climate change; the measure is designed to prevent any shaping of respondents’ narratives according preconceived topics. Secondly, the method emphasises responsive inquiries into aspects of the interviewees’ narrative that may be especially relevant to the study's research questions. It thereby balances empirical openness with comprehensiveness. All interviews were recorded and transcribed and then analysed via a retroductive process of mutually clarifying empirical categories and theoretical concepts (Kaufmann, 2011; Ragin, 1994).
Scientific environmental knowledge
In our interviews, the central mediating factor for the environmental orientations of the CS group is academic science. Nearly all respondents name some form of exposure to climate science as a central moment of their politicisation. Some remember a specific book that caused them to better understand the problem of climate change (CS#13), a project about climate science in school (CS#4) or a paper they were assigned to write for university (CS#23).
In line with their science-based environmental orientation, most CS respondents see the lack of knowledge about climate science as the major barrier to sustainability. When explaining why not all young people take to the streets during the climate strikes, one activist stated that ‘even if not everyone is there, you simply have to realise that many are not there because they don't have the privilege in terms of education or the time to study it.’ (CS#6) Likewise, another remarked that ‘so many people don't know that at all, [they have] no idea. And that's why we need to create awareness […] we need to plant this topic in all social classes and milieus.’ (CS#3) For most respondents, raising awareness is synonymous with science communication. One activist explains his understanding of the movement as follows: ‘the climate strike is and remains a bit of a mouthpiece between society and science. I see that as the task of the climate strike, to show a little bit how bad the situation is now and to bring the scientific facts to the population.’ (CS#14)
For some respondents, the role of science goes beyond conveying knowledge about climate change. They envision an active role for scientists in governance. ‘It is only logical to listen to the science and push ahead with what is needed’ says one respondent (CS#12). Another activist even holds the following views: Science should be much more in charge. […] Because we are guided by science and scientists themselves. I also see that they can't be political in a way. Because otherwise they are no longer considered neutral or objective. But that the federal government provides very clear information to the scientific community, and not always a ‘We're trying to find arguments for and against and they must be balanced’. (CS#6)
Importantly, the political orientation towards science is far weaker in the interviews with non-student activists. A respondent, who is currently training to become a technician, states as his initial motivation to join the protest that he wanted to overcome his social isolation and felt empowered by being part of a big movement (CS#7). In terms of strategy, an activist working in food services argues that his priority is to act against food waste and that the movement should be ‘closer to the people, where there is everyday injustice’ (CS#1). A baker refers to scientific facts about climate crisis but then adds that putting them front and centre is ‘difficult, because there are simply different interests’ (CS#5). Similarly, a military athlete states: ‘of course you can argue scientifically that we need net zero until 2030, but that does not matter to many people.’ (CS#20). Some of the interviewed student activists acknowledge explicitly that science might be less important as a motivating factor for environmentalism to people from non-academic backgrounds. Some of them mention openly construction workers as an example of people in Switzerland who are already affected by climate change but who are less represented in their movement than they would hope (CS#1,4,8,19).
When CW respondents referred to science, it was much more ambivalent than in the CS group. All interviewees acknowledged the existence of climate change, two even said that they are part of the climate movement (CW#1, 14). However, many did not feel competent enough to evaluate the different arguments they had heard on the topic. Typical answers would be: ‘I'm not a scientist, I… One says so, the other says so.’ (CW#15). Or: ‘the problem now is that you don't really know what's true. You have hundreds of facts, and one is this, the other is that […] And you really don't know, so I really don't know exactly what will be, or could be, or what you can still believe? I just find that all a bit difficult.’ (CW#16) Some took strongly dismissive positions with regard to the discourse on the climate crisis, which they felt was ‘clearly exaggerated’. (CW#13) Such positions were mostly connected to resentments against the climate movement. These were mainly articulated in terms of class. Respondents, including those who were part of the CS themselves, described the movement as dominated by university students, which they considered to be quite remote from their own position as workers. One respondent said: ‘people should not be allowed to have influence if they do not work for their money. If they are only students, who never worked… and then want to tell us what to do.’ (CW#15) Such feelings were usually connected to respondents’ encounters with management, typically the only academics they know in their workplaces. Some articulated a deep mistrust towards these ‘number crunchers’, as one of the interviewees called them: ‘they just come from their studies and say: oh yes, now we can still save money there.’ (CW#5) In some cases, this distrust is then extended to the climate movement, which is perceived as overly academic. Such resentment of the climate movement are far less present in interviews with unionised workers. This might be due to the fact that, in this case, their union had officially endorsed the movement (Unia, 2022).
Embodied environmental knowledge
In terms of embodied environmental knowledge, the ratios between CS and CW were reversed: Only one CS respondent mentioned a direct experience of climate change as a politicising moment. Yet this was also connected to formal education, where the subject took part in an exchange program in the US and so experienced an extraordinarily hot summer. In this narrative, the bodily experience of heat was directly connected to meteorological knowledge and media reports on extreme weather events. (CS#16)
In the CW group, all respondents report physical experiences with climate change, which they register in the form of heat stress specifically. A bricklayer and crane operator, for example, reported working on the slab formwork of a house: ‘around eleven you realise the pressure of the sun. After lunch break, you would want to go home. After half an hour, the sun is really burning, you sweat, you are exhausted, your body does not work anymore. Concentration vanishes. And accordingly, you just make mistakes.’ (CW#6) Another one adds: ‘at 38 degrees, you just have to take a break. You would like to continue to work, to accept the weather, but your body just tells you: This does not work.’ (CW#18) Workers in road construction report the worst experiences with heat: You work for 8, 10, 12 h with the asphalt. This comes out of the machine at 170, 180 degrees. This means the machine is hot as well, and the roller and everything. All the machines are heated up. And that means 12 h […] is just a bit too much. Especially if it is like 40 degrees and sunshine, that is extreme. I have realized myself that concentration just drops after three or half past three. And you can go and see for yourself: construction workers after three o'clock, they walk like sick men. This is the consequence of the sun and the heat of the machines. (CW#4)
One of the respondents, who is also active in the climate movement, explicitly contrasts this embodied experience with abstract knowledge on climate change. There's a difference between, hey fuck, it's 45 degrees and we have to work to, ah, wow, the Canaries are going down, seeing that on TV. The understanding that we're going extinct, I had that before, but to feel it, that's just a little bit different. […] I just feel it more in my own body now, I would say, that's the difference. (CW#1) Well, it's a bit contradictory when we pour concrete all over nature and at the same time, I say that we are a bit more in touch with nature. I mean, when you're standing on the ceiling shell at seven in the morning, getting ready to pour concrete, and it's Monday morning, it really pisses you off. It's not because you have to pour the slab, it's because it's Monday morning. And suddenly a butterfly lands in front of you. In the middle of the city of Zurich. On the fourth floor. Just a fucking butterfly lands in front of you. And you just look at it. The sun slowly rises, you slowly feel the warmth, the fucking butterfly is still there. In the fucking desolate pit of concrete. And those are the moments where I, how can I say it, it just does something to you. When I still went to school, you just didn't have that. But a moment like that, where you just experience it like that, that's awesome. (CW#1)
This respondent emphasised the contrast between his formal knowledge on the natural environment that he gained in school with his working knowledge, gained through bodily experience. However, the latter is inextricably linked to the problems of the world of work. On the one hand, these are the strains that work puts on himself, like getting up early on Monday mornings or working long hours. On the other hand, this is the environmentally destructive nature of his labour process. The respondent thus appears to acknowledge the butterfly as something noteworthy precisely because of its ‘contradiction’ with his work of pouring concrete. The dynamic is even more pronounced in another respondent's narrative: Nature is the most important asset we have. It's my recreational space. I think it's shit that we build over everything. I see it myself on the construction sites: at the beginning there are incredibly many lizards and afterwards there are none. Why does that happen? Because of us. It bothers me very much. It really bothers me very, very much. But yes, we earn our money with it. (CW#10)
Many respondents problematise the amount of toxic waste their industry produces. Others extend their critique further by confronting the scale of construction itself: We are building too much. We are doing much too much. And always faster. But instead of going faster, we should in principle say stop, we should stop now. Not going faster only to go faster. No. This does not work. We have to pull the brake. That is important. What do we leave to the next generation? Have they ever thought about that? What we take now – water, building materials – what will the next generation do in 20, 30, 40, 50 years? (CW#4)
Almost all construction workers with whom we spoke articulated concrete how their construction sites might be made more sustainable. This included using renewable building materials, such as hemp or wood or saving energy, but workers also had highly developed ideas regarding energy-saving machine use, logistics and architecture. Yet such arguments concerning the technical improvement of sustainability in production were not formulated as actual suggestions for their own companies but essentially fulfilled a function of criticism: from the point of view of the interviewees, they provide evidence that firms deliberately decide against obvious sustainability potentials for reasons of profitability. Thus, even the most environmentally minded respondents refuse to be held accountable for the destructiveness of their industry, as they do not see any way to influence management decisions: Interviewer: The construction industry accounts for 25 percent of Switzerland's domestic emissions. Can you influence that in your work? Respondent: Not at all. Interviewer: But you work there, you must carry it out. Respondent: I have no choice, I have to pay my fucking rent. And I have zero co-determination. Right now, we're preparing a strike, so why should I worry about what they decide up there if I can't influence that? (CW#1)
Most of the respondents draw parallels between the treatment they experience as employees in the industry and the use of natural resources. A crane operator who is about to retire, for example, explains: ‘too much is being thrown away on the construction sites, and the whole situation has nothing to do with the environment.’ He links this perceived waste expressly to many years of experience with a reduction in the workforce and increasing stress at the same time: ‘they save in labour costs what they waste in material. And that is the wrong way’, he concludes (CW#11). Consequently, a reduction in working time is the primary demand articulated by the respondents. Such a step, they feel, would relieve both themselves from some of the strains of their work as well lighten the burden on the environment through reduced emissions. However, most respondents remain highly sceptical that such an improvement can be achieved, and some are afraid it would be accompanied by further intensification in the working hours that remain.
Discussion
The interviews reveal stark differences in the environmental orientation of the climate activists and that of the construction workers. The activist orientation is primarily mediated by scientific environmental knowledge. This knowledge derives not only from courses on climate change itself; the viewpoint is observed across all CS respondents independent of their field of concentration. Rather, it refers to a more general ‘scientistic’ mode of knowing the world, which the students practice daily in school and university as they pursue credentials offered by formal education. This emphasis on science was much weaker in interviews with non-student activists. CW respondents demonstrate by contrast an embodied knowledge of nature, which is connected to intense experiences of suffering from the effects of climate change, such as heat stress. This again differs from the embodied knowledge that results from participating in outdoor leisure activities – hiking, skiing and the like – insofar as it is gained through the transformation of nature at work (White, 1996).
In sum, the data point to a strong connection between work and environmental orientation. Previous research has already suggested this connection, but it did not account for concrete working practices systematically. This neglect is present in Marxian approaches which reduce work to a proxy for class (for a critical review see: Norton, 2003) as well as in approaches that draw on opinion research and conceptualise work as the demographic category of occupation (Eversberg, 2020, 2021; Fritz and Koch, 2019; Rubik et al., 2021). The praxeological approach to work developed here rather emphasises the importance of communities of practice instead of characteristics or features of individuals. The results presented above indicate that different working practices of respondents will account for much of the difference seen in environmental orientation.
Differences in work-related environmental knowledge identified here likewise coincide with quite different political approaches to environmental problems. The scientific environmental knowledge of the students translated into technocratic political demands for a direct involvement of science into government as well as more science communication as a form of raising awareness of climate change (‘listen to the science’). CW respondents are typically not environmentalists in the traditional sense. But they develop an environmental critique of the industry that employs them, and this critical standpoint is inherently connected to awareness of their own precarious working conditions. Such conditions expose CW respondents to the effects of climate change, which in turn fosters an approach to the topic as framed by health and safety. The orientation is reflected in a study by Newman and Humphrys (2020), who show that many Australian construction workers are avid organisers when it comes to heat stress. Furthermore, CW's knowledge of the production processes has convinced them that a more sustainable form of production is possible. This is nevertheless clearly distinct from what management studies are now calling ‘employee green behavior’ (Norton et al., 2015) or ‘environmental workplace behavior’ (Ciocirlan, 2017), as the CW respondents refuse to be held accountable for the unsustainable practices of their companies; they do not see a path for influencing corporate practices nor do they even expect be heard by their superiors. Their concern therefore takes on a predominantly negative form which converges in part with what Heine and Mautz (1989: 202–6) have termed ‘critical technology optimism’. Respondents, in other words, develop their criticism on the basis of their technical knowledge of production, and argue that a more sustainable organisation of production is possible. Yet our interviewees surpass the merely technological register when they demand a reduction of working hours to mitigate their own stress as well as their industry's deleterious impact on the environment. As such, their views – perhaps surprisingly – accord with degrowth approaches arguing for reduced working hours on environmental grounds (Fitzgerald et al., 2018). Proponents of degrowth even argue that reducing working hours could resolve the ‘jobs vs. environment’ dilemma (Hoffmann and Paulsen, 2020).
Conclusion
The results presented here provide some answers to the research questions posed at the outset. For RQ1, the article identified strong differences in the environmental orientations of the CS and CW group but showed that both are deeply concerned about climate change. Regarding RQ2, the interview data suggest that a basic difference between the academic environmental knowledge predominant among the student respondents and the embodied environmental knowledge of the construction workers is an important explanatory factor for their different orientations. Such differences in environmental knowledge can in turn be interpreted as resulting from the distinct daily working practices of the two groups (RQ3). Because the institutions shaping the work practices of Swiss students and construction workers are to be found globally, it is reasonable to infer that similar results might be expected if the study were conducted elsewhere or internationally. However, when considering the limits of the study, it must be emphasised that it cannot identify direct causal mechanisms between work practice and environmental orientation. The limitation is not only an effect of the qualitative nature of the study, but is also due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to isolate the influence of work on environmental orientations from other factors.
Still, the results presented here carry significant theoretical and practical implications. First and foremost, they challenge the predominant understanding of environmental concern, which equates the latter with knowledge and acceptance of scientific facts about the ecological crisis. Not only is such scientific knowledge unavailable to people without higher education, but more importantly, such knowledge and the corresponding credentials fulfil a function of legitimising the hierarchical division of labour in modern societies (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). In the construction industry, this hierarchy manifests itself as a dramatic division between managerial and manual labour, which sows distrust of the CW respondents towards academic ‘number crunchers’. Distrust is also manifest in the scepticism or even resentment harboured against scientific discourse, which is so important to the climate movement. This dynamic is not however equivalent to an anti-environmentalism among CW respondents. They are rather, fully capable of formulating a clear awareness of the ecological crisis, along with demands to address it. But this awareness is linked to a problematisation of working conditions, and does not necessarily uphold conservation as a value in itself. Consequently, for CW respondents, the central arena of environmental politics is the collective negotiation of the conditions of production.
The evidence amassed here suggests that an alliance of climate activists and construction workers remains a possibility. The potential is underscored when activists state that they would like to be more inclusive of non-academics, especially those who – like construction workers – are affected by climate change themselves. Consequently, the Climate Strike declared its solidarity with a strike against the extension of working hours in the construction industry, and some of its activists were present at the strike assembly (Climate Strike, 2022). Some of the interviewed construction workers are already, for their part, active in the climate movement. One of the most important factors for any alliance of the climate movement with non-academic workers (and not just with those in construction) will be a broadening of the conception of environmentalism beyond the dominant science-focused or academic environmental discourse; it would also have to consider seriously the embodied environmental knowledge that comes from experience in manual labour. In analytical terms, the concept of ‘environmental orientation at work’ could well foster such an expansive viewpoint. Yet this heuristic does not only focus on the pro-environmental orientation, but can also locate where specific groups of workers may contribute to a social-ecological transformation due to the institutional conditions of their work, as well as certain limitations. The anti-intellectualism evident in the CW respondents’ general mistrust against academics is one example for such a limitation. Overall, the results of the study index the relevance of work practices for the emergence and differentiation of environmental orientations, which must be pursued through further research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Noah Bortolussi, Nicole Gisler, Benjamin Haab, Linus Petermann and Len Thaler for their help in conducting the interviews and Lauren Rickards for valuable feedback.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.