{"id":193,"date":"2019-04-18T12:03:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/nuclearsocieties\/?page_id=193"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:30:09","slug":"dr-caroline-mccalman-phd-researcher-2013-2019","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/nuclear-societies\/dr-caroline-mccalman-phd-researcher-2013-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Caroline McCalman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Member from 2013 to 2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Caroline McCalman was a member of the Nuclear Societies Research Group as a doctoral researcher from 2013 to 2019. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Nuclear Heresy: Environmentalism as Implicit Religion’ (2019), is a discourse study of environmentalism in the UK. It was funded by the ESRC and undertaken at the University of Sheffield. The research indicates how reframing environmental issues using religious concepts and language can deepen our understanding of people\u2019s relationship to the environment and environmentalism. The thesis suggests that this process of reframing may be important for the social sciences, by illuminating new ways to engage with and understand the controversies and debates at hand. The data supporting this reframing analysis was obtained through in-depth, semi-structured one-on-one interviews with individuals identified as being \u2018environmentally concerned\u2019 and was analysed first thematically, and then using the researcher\u2019s \u2018discourse toolkit\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Nuclear power is treated as an emblematic issue<\/em> to provide a concrete focus for a topic prone to abstraction; viewing environmentalism as a form of religion encouraged interdisciplinary working. By developing ideas from Bailey\u2019s implicit religion<\/em> (Bailey, 1997) I provide a language for environmentalism-as-religion, wherein pro-nuclear heretics challenge an anti-nuclear orthodoxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linking environmental discourses to enduring cosmologies shows that \u2018superficial\u2019 conflict over climate change mitigation is acrimonious precisely because<\/em> it deals with manifestations of deeper convictions on the human-nature relationship.  Updated versions of existing \u2018nuclear discourses\u2019 are analysed in combination with environmental-religious discourses, showing that ideas about public understanding and acceptance of nuclear power, even when rebranded as \u2018sustainable\u2019, are still best understood in terms of ancient cosmological ideas about the \u2018natural\u2019 or \u2018proper\u2019 way for humanity to approach and interact with the environment. Key environmental discourses were overtly religious and or even direct reformulations of Christian mythoi<\/em>, with important implications for the movement\u2019s stagnation and inherent contradictions. This thesis argues for the social sciences to take religion seriously, as the religious impulse \u2013 both implicit and explicit \u2013 is an important social phenomenon which shows no sign of fading and remains an important factor in modern society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full thesis is available to read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Member from 2013 to 2019 Caroline McCalman was a member of the Nuclear Societies Research Group as a doctoral researcher from 2013 to 2019. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Nuclear Heresy: Environmentalism as Implicit Religion’ (2019), is a discourse study of environmentalism in the UK. It was funded by the ESRC and undertaken at the University of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1163,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDr Caroline McCalman - Nuclear Societies Research Group<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/nuclear-societies\/dr-caroline-mccalman-phd-researcher-2013-2019\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dr Caroline McCalman - Nuclear Societies Research Group\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Member from 2013 to 2019 Caroline McCalman was a member of the Nuclear Societies Research Group as a doctoral researcher from 2013 to 2019. 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