Toward low-carbon ways of life: The cultural politics of contesting aeromobility

The need for demand-side climate solutions is increasingly recognized in science and society. Such solutions imply that demand for goods and services is targeted either via changes in the use of infrastructure and technology or via cultural changes in consumption and lifestyle among the global affluent.

In this thesis, I explore how to enable cultural change around affluent overconsumption through an empirical investigation of Sweden’s flight-free movement, which I analyze as a case of cultural politics of contesting aeromobility. In particular, I conduct discourse analysis to examine how meanings of aeromobility are constructed, sustained, contested, and reformulated. Following that, I apply a lens of prefigurative politics to analyze how future-oriented practices around low-carbon and flight-free ways of life are enacted in the present.

The thesis includes three academic papers. Paper I uses travel magazines and digital media sources to trace the discursive development of holiday air travel in Sweden. Paper II builds on interviews with key actors in the flight-free movement to analyze how they prefigure alternatives to aeromobility. Paper III is a combined case study exploring competing discourses on the future of aeromobility based on interviews with actors in the flight-free movement and the aviation industry.

The findings show that aeromobility has been constructed as a desirable social norm in Sweden through the historical discourse “Aspirational luxury” and the contemporary discourse “Hypermobility”, and this norm is sustained into the future through the industry discourse “Green flying”. I also trace the emergence of an alternative discourse, “Staying on the ground”, and show how it contests and reformulates the meanings attached to aeromobility. Staying on the ground gathers actors in the flight-free movement around storylines about a desirable, low-carbon way of life. These storylines are enacted in practice through prefigurative environmental activism focused on avoiding high-carbon consumption. Notably, the prefigurative politics of the flight-free movement extend beyond finding more sustainable ways of traveling to reflect a broader reconsideration of how to live well under climate change.

The thesis contributes to the literature on demand-side climate solutions by demonstrating how prefigurative movements can serve as a driver of cultural change through the enactment of alternative meanings and practices. Such a shift in culture is critical for reshaping the norms through which high-emitting lifestyles are sustained, and thus for achieving the demand-side solutions needed to meet global climate goals.