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http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/20087
Title: | Anthropocene |
Authors: | Chua, L Fair, H |
Issue Date: | 8-Jan-2019 |
Publisher: | The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology |
Citation: | 2019 |
Abstract: | ‘The Anthropocene’ is a term that is increasingly used to define a new planetary epoch: one in which humans have become the dominant force shaping Earth’s bio-geophysical composition and processes. Although it originated in the Earth Sciences, it has since been widely adopted across academia and the public sphere as a catch-all description for the overwhelming impact of human activity on the planet. This entry examines how anthropologists have engaged with the Anthropocene, both as a set of phenomena (e.g. climate change, mass extinction) and as a politically and morally loaded concept. It identifies four main anthropological approaches to the Anthropocene, those that: 1) take the Anthropocene as a context for or backdrop to ethnographic inquiry; 2) interrogate ‘the Anthropocene’ as a socially and politically constructed idea; 3) treat the Anthropocene as an opportunity for creativity and hopeful speculation; and 4) view the Anthropocene as the outcome of long-standing global political and socio-economic inequalities. Such approaches entail distinct methods, analytical frameworks, concepts, and ethico-political programmes. Collectively, they form a large and still-evolving body of work that destabilizes divisions between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ and ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’, as well as the scholarly disciplines traditionally built around them. In this capacity, they are also pushing anthropologists to ask what distinctive methodological, analytical, and ethico-political contributions their discipline can make to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of Anthropocene studies. |
URI: | http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/20087 |
DOI: | http://dx.doi.org/10.29164/19anthro |
ISSN: | http://dx.doi.org/10.29164/19anthro |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Social and Political Sciences Research Papers |
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