Eversberg, Dennis / Fritz, Martin / von Faber, Linda / Schmelzer, Matthias (2024): The new socio-ecological class conflict. Conflicting mentalities
and interests in the dispute over transformation. Research report of the Junior Research Group „Mentalities in flux: imaginaries and social structure in modern circular bio-based societies (flumen)“, Jena.
https://doi.org/10.22032/dbt.62699

Flumen provides sociologically based explanations for the social conflictuality and possibilities of the (non-)success of a socio-ecological transformation. In a Germany-wide representative ‘BioMentalities’ survey, the Junior Research Group asked 4,000 people about their mentalities, i.e. their attitudes, views and feelings regarding socio-ecological change as well as their everyday habits and socio-economic situation. Using the survey data, researchers from flumen analysed mental and socio-structural contrasts within German society that are shaping the current social debates on socio-ecological transformation.

The research report presented here summarises the key evaluation results. In addition, a book was published in summer 2024, that provide readers with more detailed explanations, for example on the positioning of the flumen study in the interpretive landscape of other empirical studies on socio-ecological transformation as a field of conflict, on the content and methodology of the flumen survey, on the analysis procedure used to evaluate the data and on the various interpretive results.

The survey results show that people’s attitudes to the questions of whether, how quickly and in what form a socio-ecological transformation is necessary differ, in some cases strikingly – and that these opinions tend to be related to people’s social situations and the associated interests. The authors interpret this as a new socio-ecological class conflict.