Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene
Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene

Author: Gabriele Dürbeck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1000432505

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The Anthropocene concept draws attention to the various forms of entanglement of social, political, ecological, biological and geological processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The ensuing complexity and ambiguity create manifold challenges to widely established theories, methodologies, epistemologies and ontologies. The contributions to this volume engage with conceptual issues of scale in the Anthropocene with a focus on mediated representation and narrative. They are centered around the themes of scale and time, scale and the nonhuman and scale and space. The volume presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, geography, political sciences, history and literary, cultural and media studies. Together, they contribute to current debates on the (re-)imagining of forms of human responsibility that meet the challenges created by humanity entering an age of scalar complexity.

Narrating the Mesh
Narrating the Mesh

Author: Marco Caracciolo

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2021-02-26

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0813945844

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A hierarchical model of human societies’ relations with the natural world is at the root of today’s climate crisis; Narrating the Mesh contends that narrative form is instrumental in countering this ideology. Drawing inspiration from Timothy Morton’s concept of the "mesh" as a metaphor for the human-nonhuman relationship in the face of climate change, Marco Caracciolo investigates how narratives in genres such as the novel and the short story employ formal devices to effectively channel the entanglement of human communities and nonhuman phenomena. How can narrative undermine linearity in order to reject notions of unlimited technological progress and economic growth? What does it mean to say that nonhuman materials and processes—from contaminated landscapes to natural evolution—can become characters in stories? And, conversely, how can narrative trace the rising awareness of climate change in the thick of human characters’ mental activities? These are some of the questions Narrating the Mesh addresses by engaging with contemporary works by Ted Chiang, Emily St. John Mandel, Richard Powers, Jeff VanderMeer, Jeanette Winterson, and many others. Entering interdisciplinary debates on narrative and the Anthropocene, this book explores how stories can bridge the gap between scientific models of the climate and the human-scale world of everyday experience, powerfully illustrating the complexity of the ecological crisis at multiple levels.

Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene
Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene

Author: Gabriele Dürbeck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-26

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1000432483

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The Anthropocene concept draws attention to the various forms of entanglement of social, political, ecological, biological and geological processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The ensuing complexity and ambiguity create manifold challenges to widely established theories, methodologies, epistemologies and ontologies. The contributions to this volume engage with conceptual issues of scale in the Anthropocene with a focus on mediated representation and narrative. They are centered around the themes of scale and time, scale and the nonhuman and scale and space. The volume presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, geography, political sciences, history and literary, cultural and media studies. Together, they contribute to current debates on the (re-)imagining of forms of human responsibility that meet the challenges created by humanity entering an age of scalar complexity. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003136989

Postcolonialism Cross-Examined
Postcolonialism Cross-Examined

Author: Monika Albrecht

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-19

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1000007820

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Taking a strikingly interdisciplinary and global approach, Postcolonialism Cross-Examined reflects on the current status of postcolonial studies and attempts to break through traditional boundaries, creating a truly comparative and genuinely global phenomenon. Drawing together the field of mainstream postcolonial studies with post-Soviet postcolonial studies and studies of the late Ottoman Empire, the contributors in this volume question many of the concepts and assumptions we have become accustomed to in postcolonial studies, creating a fresh new version of the field. The volume calls the merits of the field into question, investigating how postcolonial studies may have perpetuated and normalized colonialism as an issue exclusive to Western colonial and imperial powers. The volume is the first to open a dialogue between three different areas of postcolonial scholarship that previously developed independently from one another: • the wide field of postcolonial studies working on European colonialism, • the growing field of post-Soviet postcolonial/post-imperial studies, • the still fledgling field of post-Ottoman postcolonial/post-imperial studies, supported by sideways glances at the multidirectional conditions of interaction in East Africa and the East and West Indies. Postcolonialism Cross-Examined looks at topics such as humanism, nationalism, multiculturalism, nostalgia, and the Anthropocene in order to piece together a new, broader vision for postcolonial studies in the twenty-first century. By including territories other than those covered by the postcolonial mainstream, the book strives to reframe the “postcolonial” as a genuinely global phenomenon and develop multidirectional postcolonial perspectives.

Geo-societal Narratives
Geo-societal Narratives

Author: Martin Bohle

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-23

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 3030790282

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This book provides an accessible overview of the societal relevance of contemporary geosciences. Engaging various disciplines from humanities and social sciences, the book offers philosophical, cultural, economic, and geoscientific insights into how to contextualise geosciences in the node of Culture and Nature. The authors introduce two perspectives of societal geosciences, both informed by the lens of geoethics. Throughout the text core themes are explored; human agency, the integrity of place, geo-centricity, economy and climate justice, subjective sense-making and spirituality, nationalism, participatory empowerment and leadership in times of anthropogenic global change. The book concludes with a discussion on culture, education, or philosophy of science as aggregating concepts of seemingly disjunct narratives. The diverse intellectual homes of the authors offer a rich resource in terms of how they perceive human agency within the Earth system. Two geoscientific perspectives and fourteen narratives from various cultural, social and political viewpoints contextualise geosciences in the World(s) of the Anthropocene.

Break Up the Anthropocene
Break Up the Anthropocene

Author: Steve Mentz

Publisher:

Published: 2019-05-29

Total Pages: 86

ISBN-13: 9781517908621

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Takes the singular eco-catastrophic "Age of Man" and redefines this epoch We live in a new world: the Anthropocene. The Age of Man is defined in many ways, and most dramatically through climate change, mass extinction, and human marks in the geological record. Ideas of the Anthropocene spill out from the geophysical sciences into the humanities, social sciences, the arts, and mainstream debates--but it's hard to know what the new coinage really means. Break Up the Anthropocene argues that this age should subvert imperial masculinity and industrial conquest by opening up the plural possibilities of Anthropocene debates of resilience, adaptation, and the struggle for environmental justice. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis
The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis

Author: Clive Hamilton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1317589084

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The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, the ‘Age of Humans’. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognised scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, the book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science. If in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. It means the end of the ‘social-only’ understanding of human history and agency. These pillars of modernity are now destabilised. The scale and pace of the shifts occurring on Earth are beyond human experience and expose the anachronisms of ‘Holocene thinking’. The book explores what kinds of narratives are emerging around the scientific idea of the new geological epoch, and what it means for the ‘politics of unsustainability’.

Rivers of the Anthropocene
Rivers of the Anthropocene

Author: Jason M. Kelly

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0520295021

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At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This exciting volume presents the work and research of the Rivers of the Anthropocene Network, an international collaborative group of scientists, social scientists, humanists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers working to produce innovative transdisciplinary research on global freshwater systems. In an attempt to bridge disciplinary divides, the essays in this volume address the challenge in studying the intersection of biophysical and human sociocultural systems in the age of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch of humans' own making. Featuring contributions from authors in a rich diversity of disciplines—from toxicology to archaeology to philosophy—this book is an excellent resource for students and scholars studying both freshwater systems and the Anthropocene.

Allegories of the Anthropocene
Allegories of the Anthropocene

Author: Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2019-06-28

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1478005580

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In Allegories of the Anthropocene Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature. In these works, authors and artists use allegory as a means to understand the multiscalar complexities of the Anthropocene and to critique the violence of capitalism, militarism, and the postcolonial state. DeLoughrey examines the work of a wide range of artists and writers—including poets Kamau Brathwaite and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Dominican installation artist Tony Capellán, and authors Keri Hulme and Erna Brodber—whose work addresses Caribbean plantations, irradiated Pacific atolls, global flows of waste, and allegorical representations of the ocean and the island. In examining how island writers and artists address the experience of finding themselves at the forefront of the existential threat posed by climate change, DeLoughrey demonstrates how the Anthropocene and empire are mutually constitutive and establishes the vital importance of allegorical art and literature in understanding our global environmental crisis.

Future Remains
Future Remains

Author: Gregg Mitman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-04-20

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 022650882X

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What can a pesticide pump, a jar full of sand, or an old calico print tell us about the Anthropocene—the age of humans? Just as paleontologists look to fossil remains to infer past conditions of life on earth, so might past and present-day objects offer clues to intertwined human and natural histories that shape our planetary futures. In this era of aggressive hydrocarbon extraction, extreme weather, and severe economic disparity, how might certain objects make visible the uneven interplay of economic, material, and social forces that shape relationships among human and nonhuman beings? Future Remains is a thoughtful and creative meditation on these questions. The fifteen objects gathered in this book resemble more the tarots of a fortuneteller than the archaeological finds of an expedition—they speak of planetary futures. Marco Armiero, Robert S. Emmett, and Gregg Mitman have assembled a cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene, bringing together a mix of lively essays, creatively chosen objects, and stunning photographs by acclaimed photographer Tim Flach. The result is a book that interrogates the origins, implications, and potential dangers of the Anthropocene and makes us wonder anew about what exactly human history is made of.