Managing the Planet: The Anthropocene, Good Stewardship, and the Empty Promise of a Solution to Ecological Crisis (original) (raw)
Related papers
In Arias-Maldonado, M., & Trachtenberg, Z. (Eds.). (2019). Rethinking the Environment for the Anthropocene: Political Theory and Socionatural Relations in the New Geological Epoch. Routledge., 2019
The concept of Anthropocene seems to represent a new opportunity for Earth scientists and social (de)constructivists to definitely abolish the distinction between nature and society, to affirm human power on the planet and to allege the definitive ‘end of nature’. Indeed, the fact that humanity is about to be acknowledged as a new geological force represents the last chance for the Promethean triumphalism, embodied by geo and eco-constructivists (Neyrat, 2015), to prosper upon the wreckage of its own ecological collapse. This position can be summarised in McKibben terms: ‘we now live in a world of our own making’. I will argue, against this view, that to acknowledge that nature and society are more and more intertwined around us - and inside us - is not enough to abandon the analytic distinction between aspects deriving from human societies and those deriving from nature’s ‘non-identity’ (otherness). In other words, natural objects have still agency and human societies themselves are materially anchored in biophysical conditions that transcend them. The contradiction between the claim that humans are new “planetary managers” or “Earth engineers” and our obvious inability to control our environmental impacts on the planet constitutes one major sign of natural agency, or what I call ‘the return of nature’. Moreover, I will show that the concept of Anthropocene aims at pursuing an unapologetically anthropocentric world picture in order to justify further capitalist exploitation of the Earth (Crist, 2013). The Anthropocene promoters, driven by a complex mix of economic, scientific and political motives, tend to encourage the hubristic modern faith in technology to fix problems created by technology itself. Against the arrogance contained in this concept, I argue that the repeated failures of ecological modernisation and environmental managerialism should be an opportunity to re-think our place on the planet and to accept the fragility and vulnerability of the human species in the face of complex and unpredictable natural phenomena. In short, what needs to be developed is not a new form of human hubris but our capacities for gratitude, humility, respect and restraint.
FRAMING THE ANTHROPOCENE: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
The Anthropocene has become a key theme in contemporary speculations about the meaning of the present and the possibilities for the future. While eco-pragmatists argue that present circumstances present opportunities and possibilities for a thriving future for humanity, a ‘good Anthropocene’, critics suggest that the future will be bad for at least most of humanity as we accelerate the sixth extinction event on the planet. These discussions are key themes in the discipline of geography, but the geopolitics of all this, which may be very ugly in coming decades, requires much further elucidation of the common Anthropocene tropes currently in circulation. As with the classic Western movie, in the search for the gold neither ‘the good’ nor ‘the bad’ have the whole story; ‘the ugly’ will probably turn out to be decisive in determining how things play out. How the Anthropocene is interpreted, and who gets to invoke which framing of the new human age, matters greatly both for the planet and for particular parts of humanity. All of which is now a key theme in the discussions of geopolitical ecology that requires careful evaluation of both how geology has recently become so important in global politics and discussions of humanity’s future and how political geographers might usefully contribute to the discussion.
The Ideology of the Anthropocene
Final version available in Environmental Values 24 (2015): 9–29. The Anthropocene is a radical reconceptualisation of the relationship between humanity and nature. It posits that we have entered a new geological epoch in which the human species is now the dominant Earth-shaping force, and it is rapidly gaining traction in both the natural and social sciences. This article critically explores the scientific representation of the concept and argues that the Anthropocene is less a scientific concept than the ideational underpinning for a particular worldview. It is paradigm dressed as epoch. In particular, it normalises a certain portion of humanity as the ‘human’ of the Anthropocene, reinserting ‘man’ into nature only to re-elevate ‘him’ above it. This move promotes instrumental reason. It implies that humanity and its planet are in an exceptional state, explicitly invoking the idea of planetary management and legitimising major interventions into the workings of the earth, such as geoengineering. I conclude that the scientific origins of the term have diminished its radical potential, and ask whether the concept’s radical core can be retrieved.
The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship
Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced. However, in the twentyfirst century, we face scarcity in critical resources, the degradation of ecosystem services, and the erosion of the planet's capability to absorb our wastes. Equity issues remain stubbornly difficult to solve. This situation is novel in its speed, its global scale and its threat to the resilience of the Earth System. The advent of the Anthropence, the time interval in which human activities now rival global geophysical processes, suggests that we need to fundamentally alter our relationship with the planet we inhabit. Many approaches could be adopted, ranging from geoengineering solutions that purposefully manipulate parts of the Earth System to becoming active stewards of our own life support system. The Anthropocene is a reminder that the Holocene, during which complex human societies have developed, has been a stable, accommodating environment and is the only state of the Earth System that we know for sure can support contemporary society. The need to achieve effective planetary stewardship is urgent. As we go further into the Anthropocene, we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.
The Politics of the Anthropocene
2018
The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities. However, the world remains stuck with practices and modes of thinking that were developed in the Holocene – the epoch of around 12,000 years of unusual stability in the Earth system, toward the end of which modern institutions such as states and capitalist markets arose. These institutions persist despite their potentially catastrophic failure to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, foremost among them a rapidly changing climate and accelerating biodiversity loss. The pathological trajectories of these institutions need to be disrupted by advancing ecological reflexivity: the capacity of structures, systems, and sets of ideas to question their own core commitments, and if ne...
An Analysis of Rethinking Humanity in the Anthropocene: The Long View of Humans and Nature
The purpose of this article is to present a brief analysis of the book “The Posthuman” by R. Braidotti (2013) to reconsider the long view of humanity in the Anthropocene, to view humans and nature. Our perception of the future of the planet and humanity is a significant political and social issue. Yet the general flow of an unequivocal debate for a fully human relationship with the earth is still greatly hindered. Until such a conflict becomes clear, it is unlikely that we will begin to reign in environmental change because we are creatures of topographic energy who have created Anthropocene. We need to consider whether it is possible to bring about social change with an alternative view of what our identity is, what it was, and what could upset the existing perception of human’s relationship with nature. A rational sense of sustainable and developmental substance that manages human culture within a wider world is an important extens2ion to the totality of political activity.
Anthropocene Discourse: Geopolitics after Environment
Much more than has been the case with environmental politics for the last half century, the Anthropocene formulation focuses on the planetary scale transformations currently underway. Only most obviously these are phenomena under the label of climate change and the reduction of biodiversity in the sixth planetary extinction event. While environmental discourse has largely been about protecting a supposedly fairly stable external context from the depredations of ‘development’, the Anthropocene suggests much more clearly that the rich and powerful parts of humanity are reshaping the planetary system in processes that are about production much more than environmental protection. Holocene biomes have been so thoroughly changed that terrestrial biota and the human systems they support are being reconfigured in novel anthrome geographies in an increasingly artificial biosphere. This reassembling of living and artificial components is making the future Anthropocene one shaped by political decisions about investment, infrastructure and new forms of urban life and rural resource extraction. Whether this is a relatively benign future for most of humanity, or a violent one involving forcible control by the rich and powerful over the remains of a rapidly degrading biosphere and its peoples, is now the overarching question of geological politics.
Metactritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, 2017
Among eco studies, the Anthropocene theory is by far the most unusual in the field of humanities. First and foremost, it differs from the Eco-Marxist criticism in that that its grounding is not in critical theory, but in the scientifically traceable changes in the environment, which are then re-politicised. Secondly, its claims pose a certain pessimism, in contrast with the activist optimism that we can still change something about our future as a species. In the Anthropocene, humans have changed the face of the Earth in so much that it is irreversible, the industrial man versus nature paradigm is now obsolete and replaced by man as a force of nature. Then why is this part of the “studies” series, what critical insight can humanities impose on the gloom data?