Papers by Julia Adeney Thomas
Nature Comment, 2024
Even without a formal geological definition, the idea of a major planetary transition dated to th... more Even without a formal geological definition, the idea of a major planetary transition dated to the mid-twentieth century remains useful across many disciplines. The Anthropocene was originally understood by Paul Crutzen as not only representing humanity’s influence on Earth’s geological record (he was well aware of earlier anthropogenic impacts), but also reflecting a system with physical characteristics that had, since widespread industrialization, departed from the prolonged, relatively stable conditions of the Holocene. An Anthropocene concept anchored to begin in the mid-twentieth century is aligned with both the Great Acceleration and a fundamental shift in Earth’s state. Understanding the Anthropocene in this way would prevent the current confusion of the term meaning different things in different contexts. It complies with the term’s originally intended meaning, and also reflects a clear evidence-based geological signature.
The Smithsonian, 2024
This essay explores ten misconceptions about the Anthropocene that underplay how much we've alter... more This essay explores ten misconceptions about the Anthropocene that underplay how much we've altered the planetary system, pushing it outside of Holocene norms. The Anthropocene, correctly understood as the transformation of the Earth system in the mid-twentieth century, gives us the new perspective we need to deal with our altered Earth.
Journal of Quaternary Science, 2023
The Anthropocene Epoch is a crucial conceptual breakthrough not only for stratigraphy but also fo... more The Anthropocene Epoch is a crucial conceptual breakthrough not only for stratigraphy but also for the humanities. The question, raised by Chvosek (2023), is how best to create engagement between the sciences of the Anthropocene and the study of values, hopes and power in the world's many cultures past and present. In response, this piece makes three points. First, it discusses some of the collaborations that have already taken place between humanists of various kinds and the scientists providing the stratigraphic evidence for the Anthropocene Epoch. Second, it notes that the 'Anthropocene' remains, at core, a stratigraphic concept and that the new epoch is now well supported by physical evidence. Third, it shows that the recent idea of an Anthropocene 'event' (Gibbard, 2022) does not invite engagement with the humanities. The overall argument is that the integrity of expertise must be maintained even while we encourage the cross-disciplinary understanding crucial to addressing our global environmental challenge.
Handbook of the Anthropocene (Springer), 2023
Using the biological concept of "mutualism," this essay analyzes how a regenerative, resilient ci... more Using the biological concept of "mutualism," this essay analyzes how a regenerative, resilient city might function in the Anthropocene. From Nathanaël Wallenhorst and Christoph Wulf, eds., Handbook of the Anthropocene, (Springer, 2023)
Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J., Thomas, J.A. (2023). Human Reconfiguration of the Biosphere. In: Wallenhorst, N., Wulf, C. (eds) Handbook of the Anthropocene. Springer , 2023
The biosphere coevolves with the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere to maintain a habitable ... more The biosphere coevolves with the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere to maintain a habitable space on Earth. Over billions of years-and despite periodic setbacks-it has evolved increasing complexity, from its microbial beginnings to the complex interactions between animals, plants, fungi and unicellular microscopic life that sustain its present state. Recently, the biosphere has been profoundly changed by humans. In part, this includes increased rates of extinction that are reminiscent of past fundamental perturbations to life. But the change is even more profound, resulting from a combination of marked translocations of species beyond their indigenous ranges, overt concentration of biomass in humans and their farm animals, reconfiguration of landscape habitats and over-utilisation of ocean life, excessive appropriation of energy from the biosphere (including its fossilised component), and increasing interconnectivity between technology and life. The biosphere is a fundamental component of the Earth System, existing for billions of years, and co-evolving with the atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere to maintain a habitable space for life (Vernadsky, 1998). It is ubiquitous at the Earth's surface, extending several kilometres into the lithosphere, where its subsurface mass alone is considered to be ≈15% of the total carbon in the biosphere (Bar-On et al., 2018). It also extends high into the atmosphere, where microbes are important for atmospheric processes such as cloud formation (e.g., DeLeon-Rodriguez et al., 2013). The total mass of carbon in the biosphere is of the order of ≈550 gigatons (Gt, a gigaton = one billion metric tonnes), with plants accounting for ≈450 Gt: by comparison, animals are ≈2 Gt. Before widespread deforestation by humans, the
Journal of Quaternary Science, 2023
The Anthropocene Epoch is a crucial conceptual breakthrough not only for stratigraphy but also fo... more The Anthropocene Epoch is a crucial conceptual breakthrough not only for stratigraphy but also for the humanities. The question, raised by Chvosek (2023), is how best to create engagement between the sciences of the Anthropocene and the study of values, hopes and power in the world's many cultures past and present. In response, this piece makes three points. First, it discusses some of the collaborations that have already taken place between humanists of various kinds and the scientists providing the stratigraphic evidence for the Anthropocene Epoch. Second, it notes that the 'Anthropocene' remains, at core, a stratigraphic concept and that the new epoch is now well supported by physical evidence. Third, it shows that the recent idea of an Anthropocene 'event' (Gibbard, 2022) does not invite engagement with the humanities. The overall argument is that the integrity of expertise must be maintained even while we encourage the cross-disciplinary understanding crucial to addressing our global environmental challenge.
Multiple Crises and the Asian Anthropocene, 2023
East Asian Environmental History Conference Program, 2023. Meeting in Daejeon, Korea
Altered Earth: Getting the Anthrop, 2022
Chapter Two of _Altered Earth_ makes the case that taking the science of the Anthropocene serious... more Chapter Two of _Altered Earth_ makes the case that taking the science of the Anthropocene seriously results not in a single human story but in many human stories. The culmination of some of them, but not all, is the transformed Earth System that parallels the geological Anthropocene.
Earth's Future, 2021
The term Anthropocene initially emerged from the Earth System science community in the early 2000... more The term Anthropocene initially emerged from the Earth System science community in the early 2000s, denoting a concept that the Holocene Epoch has terminated as a consequence of human activities. First associated with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, it was then more closely linked with the Great Acceleration in industrialization and globalization from the 1950s that fundamentally modified physical, chemical, and biological signals in geological archives. Since 2009, the Anthropocene has been evaluated by the Anthropocene Working Group, tasked with examining it for potential inclusion in the Geological Time Scale. Such inclusion requires a precisely defined chronostratigraphic and geochronological unit with a globally synchronous base and inception, with the mid-twentieth century being geologically optimal. This reflects an Earth System state in which human activities have become predominant drivers of modifications to the stratigraphic record, making it clearly distinct from the Holocene. However, more recently, the term Anthropocene has also become used for different conceptual interpretations in diverse scholarly fields, including the environmental and social sciences and humanities. These are often flexibly interpreted, commonly without reference to the geological record, and diachronous in time; they often extend much further back in time than the mid-twentieth century. These broader conceptualizations encompass wide ranges and levels of human impacts and interactions with the environment. Here, we clarify what the Anthropocene is in geological terms and compare the proposed geological (chronostratigraphic) definition with some of these broader interpretations and applications of the term "Anthropocene," showing both their overlaps and differences. Plain Language Summary The Anthropocene concept, that modern human impacts on Earth have been sufficient to bring in a new geological epoch, is only two decades old. In that short time, its use has grown explosively, not only in the Earth sciences but also far more widely to spread through the sciences generally, to spill over into the social sciences, arts, and humanities. This has led to welcome discussions between diverse scholarly communities, though also to some very different interpretations of the Anthropocene, when interpreted through different disciplinary lenses. Notably, the geological ZALASIEWICZ ET AL.
Isis
This programmatic essay argues that meaningful historical engagement with the Anthropocene begins... more This programmatic essay argues that meaningful historical engagement with the Anthropocene begins with recognizing that the concept arises not only from geology but also from Earth System science (ESS), which has evolved to incorporate both physical systems and human systems in an integrated view of our planet. It makes the case that this holistic understanding alters both the science and the history of the Anthropocene by introducing a novel form of human agency: Earth System agency. This radical new form of agency does not eclipse the individual and collective forms of agency that have always interacted with the environment but adds to them in complex and sometimes uncomfortable ways. It challenges us to develop a science-induced Anthropocene historiography and a humanities-induced Anthropocene science. The history of science is well positioned to play a dialectical role in developing a "critical friendship" between Anthropocene history and Anthropocene science-a process in which the history of science will likely be transformed as well. Our collaboration was entirely mutual; we flipped a coin to settle the order of names for the byline. Zoltán Boldizsár Simon is a historian and historical theorist at Bielefeld University. He has been an assistant professor at Leiden University and a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. His recent work explores the challenges posed by technology and the Anthropocene to the human condition and modern historical thinking. He has published in journals ranging from History of the Human Sciences and the European Journal of Social Theory to the Anthropocene Review and Time and Society, and he is the author of History in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Theory for the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, 2019) and The Epochal Event: Transformations in the Entangled Human, Technological, and Natural Worlds (Palgrave, 2020). Most recently, from 2021 onward, joining forces with Marek Tamm and the journal History and Theory, he co-conducts the collective project and serial publishing experiment "Historical Futures.
ISIS, 2022
This programmatic essay argues that meaningful historical engagement with the Anthropocene begins... more This programmatic essay argues that meaningful historical engagement with the Anthropocene begins with recognizing that the concept arises not only from geology but also from Earth System science (ESS), which has evolved to incorporate both physical systems and human systems in an integrated view of our planet. It makes the case that this holistic understanding alters both the science and the history of the Anthropocene by introducing a novel form of human agency: Earth System agency. This radical new form of agency does not eclipse the individual and collective forms of agency that have always interacted with the environment but adds to them in complex and sometimes uncomfortable ways. It challenges us to develop a science-induced Anthropocene historiography and a humanities-induced Anthropocene science. The history of science is well positioned to play a dialectical role in developing a "critical friendship" between Anthropocene history and Anthropocene science-a process in which the history of science will likely be transformed as well. Our collaboration was entirely mutual; we flipped a coin to settle the order of names for the byline. Zoltán Boldizsár Simon is a historian and historical theorist at Bielefeld University. He has been an assistant professor at Leiden University and a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. His recent work explores the challenges posed by technology and the Anthropocene to the human condition and modern historical thinking. He has published in journals ranging from History of the Human Sciences and the European Journal of Social Theory to the Anthropocene Review and Time and Society, and he is the author of History in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Theory for the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, 2019) and The Epochal Event: Transformations in the Entangled Human, Technological, and Natural Worlds (Palgrave, 2020). Most recently, from 2021 onward, joining forces with Marek Tamm and the journal History and Theory, he co-conducts the collective project and serial publishing experiment "Historical Futures.
Visualizing Fascism, 2020
Reconfiguring Modernity, 2019
The Review of Politics, 2021
The Journal of Asian Studies, 2016
Amitav Ghosh, perhaps Asia's most prominent living author, moves among many genres and across... more Amitav Ghosh, perhaps Asia's most prominent living author, moves among many genres and across vast territories. His fiction—The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Glass Place (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), and The Ibis trilogy—takes us from Calcutta where he was born in 1956 to the Arabian Sea, Paris, London, and back again to the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and beyond. His nonfiction—In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma (1998), and Countdown (1999)—rests on a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford. He went to Alexandria, Egypt, for his dissertation research. His science fiction, The Calcutta Chromosome, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997. His essays—published in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The New York Times and collected in The Iman and the Indian (2002)—address major issues such as fundamentalism. Indeed, most of his work addresses big questions, exploring the nature of communal violence, the traces of lov...
Japanese Studies, 2014
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content")... more Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content") contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
Uploads
Papers by Julia Adeney Thomas
ISBN 978-965-7160-41-1