“Of property”

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THIS POST IS PART OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT—SEE THIS DESCRIPTION OF OUR SUBMISSION.

CITATION:
John Locke. 1689. Chapter 5, Second Treatise of Civil Government.
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ABSTRACT:
Locke assumes that, as a matter of God’s grant of Creation to it, humanity as a species has a general right to everything on the Earth—Locke interprets this grant as intended to provide for humanity’s survival. However, Continue reading →

Looking Back From the Anthropocene

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As the Anthropocene unfolds and becomes more manifest, will its inhabitants look back and blame their predecessors on Earth (us, and perhaps earlier generations as well) for bequeathing them a planet not fit for Continue reading →

“The Anthropocene concept in ecology and conservation”

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CITATION:
Corlett, R.T. 2015. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 30, pp. 36 – 41.
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ABSTRACT:
The term ‘Anthropocene’ was first used in the year 2000 to refer to the current time period in which human impacts are at least as important as natural processes. It is currently being considered as a potential geological epoch, following on from the Holocene. While most environmental scientists accept Continue reading →

Decolonizing the Anthropocene

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Does Mother Earth have rights? Can glaciers listen? Should invisible elves be consulted about development projects? If you find these questions fanciful, please bear with me. I may not convince you to answer them in the affirmative, but I think I can convince you to take them seriously. Here goes. Continue reading →

“Futurologists Look Back”

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CITATION:
Sassaman, Kenneth E. 2012. Archaeologies, 8, pp. 250-268.
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ABSTRACT:
The gulf between indigenous and western experiences in the Americas may appear so vast as to obscure the relevance of knowledge about the ancient past to challenges of today. Yet, in imaging alternative futures, people of varied cultural dispositions find Continue reading →

Big History, Deep History, and the Problem of Scale

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What does it mean to talk about the anthropocene historically? Thinking about this has forced me to take a closer look at a couple areas of scholarship that I’ve watched grow over the past few years: big history and deep history. These two interdisciplinary projects have recently gained Continue reading →

Do we need “the Anthropocene?”

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As 2014 came to a close I received a wonderfully provocative e-mail from my friend and colleague in the Environmental Political Theory community John Meyer. He wrote that Continue reading →

“European Colonialism and the Anthropocene: A view from the Pacific Coast of North America”

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CITATION:
Kent G. Lightfoot, Lee M. Panich, Tsim D. Schneider, and Sara L. Gonzalez. 2013. Anthropocene, Vol. 4, pp. 101-115.
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ABSTRACT:
This paper argues that European colonialism from AD 1500 to the early 1800s marked a fundamental transformation in human–environment interactions across much of the world. The rapid founding of various colonial enterprises, particularly mission and managerial colonies, unleashed Continue reading →

“Fingerprint, bellwether, model event: Climate change as speculative anthropology”

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CITATION:
Whitington, Jerome. 2013. Anthropological Theory, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 308-328.
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ABSTRACT:

The climate change fingerprint, bellwether and model event are three epistemic figures through which it may be possible to know the future through attention to specific material relations. They offer Continue reading →

“What is ecological engineering?”

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CITATION:
Mitsch, W.J. 2012. Ecological Engineering, Vol. 45, pp. 5-12.
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ABSTRACT:
Ecological engineering, defined as the design of sustainable ecosystems that integrate human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both, has developed over the last 30 years, and rapidly over the last 10 years. Its goals include Continue reading →

The Anthropocene Campus

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Recently it was my privilege to attend the “Anthropocene Campus” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. The Campus brought together over 150 participants from around the world and with an incredible diversity of intellectual backgrounds for Continue reading →

“On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature”

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CITATION:
Eileen Crist. 2013. Environmental Humanities, Vol. 3, pp. 129-147.
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ABSTRACT:
This paper examines the recent proposal to christen our geological epoch “the Anthropocene.” The reasoning offered for this new name is that humanity’s enormous mark on the geological strata would be Continue reading →

“The Collapse of Western Civilization”

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CITATION:
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press).
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ABSTRACT:
In this work of science-based fiction, the authors imagine a future world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts Continue reading →

“Intersection of Landscape, Anthropocene and Fourth Paradigm”

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CITATION:
A.S. Barau and A.N.M. Ludin. 2012. Living Reviews in Landscape Research, Vol. 6, No. 1.
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ABSTRACT:
This review explores landscape science in the proposed age of the Anthropocene and Fourth Paradigm. Both the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm put landscape science to task, due to Continue reading →

Novel ecosystems

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Currently a very interesting and rather important debate is happening within the discipline of ecology. Scientific debates are usually not very public, not because anybody has anything to hide, but because they tend to be rather technical and difficult to follow. The debate over Continue reading →

“Forum: Archaeology of the Anthropocene”

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CITATION:
Edgeworth, M., Benjamin, J., Clarke, B., Crossland, Z., Domanska, E., Gorman, A. C., Graves-Brown, P., Harris, E. C., Hudson, M. J., Kelley, J. M., Paz, V. J., Salerno, M. A., Witmore, C. & Zarankin, A. 2014. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 1,1, pp. 73-132.
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ABSTRACT:
What role will archaeology play in the Anthropocene – the proposed new geological epoch marked by human impact on Earth systems? That is the question discussed by thirteen archaeologists and other scholars from Continue reading →