Closing the gap between knowing and causing the Anthropocene (original) (raw)
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Earthing the Anthropos? From ‘socializing the Anthropocene’ to geologizing the social
European Journal of Social Theory, 2016
Responding to claims of Anthropocene geoscience that humans are now geological agents, social scientists are calling for renewed attention to the social, cultural, political and historical differentiation of the Anthropos. But does this leave critical social thought's own key concepts and categories unperturbed by the Anthropocene provocation to think through dynamic earth processes? Can we `socialise the Anthropocene' without also opening `the social' to climate, geology and earth system change? Revisiting the earth science behind the Anthropocene thesis and drawing on social research that is using climatology and earth systems thinking to help understand socio-historical change, we explore some of the possibilities for `geologising' social thought. While critical social thought's attention to justice and exclusion remains vital, we suggest that responding to Anthropocene conditions also calls for a kind of `geo-social' thinking that relates human diversity and social difference to the potentiality and multiplicity of the earth itself. Anthropocene, Holocene, earth science, geology, climate change, deep time, social difference, geo-social futures 'The Earth is one but the world is not' (1987: n.p.). So opens Our Common Future, the 1987 report of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development. Although ecological issues at the time had already begun to chafe against disciplinary boundaries, for that small minority of social scientists drawn to the environmental field, the Commission's premise most likely seemed unproblematic. The earth-whole, integrated, singular-was the domain of the natural sciences. Social worlds-multiple, divided, contested-were the realm of the social sciences. Thirty years later, things are more complicated. Social worlds are no less fractious, but something is shifting in the way the earth is understood. As stratigrapher and Anthropocene Working Group chair, Jan Zalasiewicz recently put it: '…the Earth seems to be less one planet, rather a number of different Earths that have succeeded each other in time, each with very different chemical, physical and biological states' (cited in Hamilton, 2014: 6). For most of the last two centuries, with some exceptions, social thought has not given serious attention to the earth sciences. While the social sciences and humanities have conversed productively with biology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, complexity studies and even mathematics, the geosciences seem to have offered less fertile ground for engagement (Clark, 2011: 7-11). One reason for this may be that our planet-as presented by the scientific disciplines specialising its study-has appeared to change so gradually that it can largely be taken for granted as the static backdrop of social existence. Perhaps more importantly, in its very obduracy the earth has generally signified inertia and stability-such that any association with social life has usually been taken to imply a 3 limitation or closure of the possibilities open to collective social action. These assumptions are now under serious revision. With a nod to Donna Haraway (1991: 152), it might be said that our earth now looks disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. First came the threat of human-induced climate change-which soon developed to into the abrupt climate change thesis. Shortly afterwards, expanding on the notion of thresholds in global climate, came the idea of human-triggered transitions in the overall state of the earth system-the crux of the Anthropocene thesis. And in this way-through the proposition that humans have become geological agents-the Anthropocene thematic has drawn earth scientists into making substantive claims about the behavior, dynamics and trajectory of humankind: terrain that social thought has historically considered its own. Unsurprisingly, this move is attracting considerable interest from the social sciences and humanities. This reception of the Anthropocene already covers a broad spectrum, much of it endorsing the urgency and severity of the global environmental problems that physical scientists have been highlighting. There has also been a growing tendency, especially in the arts, architecture, literary studies and philosophy, to engage more speculatively with material generated by the earth sciences. Social scientists, on the other hand, have been more likely to cleave to a critical agenda, probing the political implications of Anthropocene science, particularly with regard to the way it constitutes `the human' or `the social'. Confronting the inclination of geoscientists to frame humanity as an undifferentiated whole, they have responded by affirming a vital role for critical social inquiry in interrogating the social, cultural and historical differences and the uneven power relations that divide the Anthropos
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.
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.
The Pandemic Within, 2021
According to many climate and environmental scientists, we are entering a phase in human history which will be characterized by huge changes in the earth's atmosphere and biosphere-global warming of course being the most pressing issue. Humanity's largely destructive influence on its unique planetary life support system has gained such a momentum lately that earth system scientists declare we have entered a new geological era, the so-called Anthropocene, in which the human (anthropos) has become the most influential geological (f)actor, trumping the natural ones in every respect. While the Anthropocene attests to the enormous power of a techno-scientifically empowered humanity to radically disrupt the earthly ecosystem upon which it fundamentally depends for its very survival, it simultaneously reveals that utter dependence, and summons us to radically rethink our residence upon the planet. At this conference we reflect upon, inventory and systematize the challenges posed to us by these developments from the standpoint of SPM's core foci, with a special emphasis on issues of ontology, epistemology, practice and wider societal consequences concerning power and politics.
, backed up by an impressive amount of data, trace the history of our entry into the Anthropocene, an era characterised by the impact of human activities on the earth's physical and biological systems. These historians of science make a stand against the deliberately mystifying narrative that suggests that the major changes at play were practically unknown until recent decades. In doing so, they highlight the conflicts between asymmetric forces and interests and call for a repoliticisation of the history of this era.