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ABSTRACT
This article explores the social meaning of Greta Thunberg. Time magazine made her Person of the Year 2019, claiming she has become a social phenomenon, a global sensation. This article utilises psychosocial theory and new social movement theory to explore the social meaning of Greta. It asks what Greta evokes in our social imaginary (Taylor, 2009, p. 146). What conscious and unconscious identifications are projected onto Greta that have made her the unlikely famous person she is? These questions are not about exploring her individual psychological, leadership, or character traits, but focus on Greta (now eighteen years old) as a social object (Latour, 2005) with a vast social network following her, including over 4.2 million Twitter followers, a new documentary film about her, and mainstream media coverage across the globe. Part one of this article outlines the context and libidinal economies that Greta operates within, and the theoretical influences the article draws upon. Part two outlines five core messages that Greta transmits, and the meanings that emerge from observing social reactions to her. The article ends with a conclusion summarising the social meanings of Greta.
Keywords: Greta Thunberg, environmentalism, sustainability, psychoanalysis, new social movements, climate change.
Introduction
In this twentieth anniversary special edition, it seemed apt to write about the greatest challenge facing humanity: the environmental emergency. Greta Thunberg has become a social phenomenon, a global sensation according to Time magazine who made her Time Person of the Year 2019. Sixteen months after commencing her lone School Strike for Climate she addressed heads of state at the UN, met with the Pope, sparred with the President of the United States, and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history (Alter et al., 2019).
This article innovates by bringing two distinct theoretical areas together: new social movement theory, and psychosocial theory, to look in new ways at how Greta mobilises and is mobilised by the social movements around her, and by wider society. New social movement theory (NSM) is vitally important to organisational studies yet is very marginalised. NSMs pioneered new networked ways of organising and led a radical change in how social movements operated, changing from fighting...