Toward An Integrated History to Guide the Future

2016

2020

About this course: The current diagnosis of the “Anthropocene” – the Age of Humans – does not only have very material implications for present and future human societies on this planet, but also, on a more epistemic level, for the traditional division between the humanities/ social sciences and the natural sciences (Chakrabarty 2009). This course starts out with an introduction into what the “Anthropocene” is, and with a review of the current state of the art on the concept and its dating as to the Anthropocene Working Group and researchers associated with it (Steffen et al., McNeill et al, Rockström et al.). This involves interdisciplinary perspectives from Earth System and Climate sciences. We then dive into several theoretical texts by historians and literary scholars (Chakrabarty, Ghosh, Mauelshagen, Latour and others) who reflect on the implications of this new era for the humanities and historical research in particular. In a next step we will look at voices critical of the concept of the “Anthropocene”, suggested alternatives (think “Capitalocene”, “Plantationocene” etc.) and consider their scope. Most of these perspectives have emerged from postcolonial studies, which have rightfully pointed to the unequal responsibilities and power differentials involved in the coming-about of the Anthropocene (Malm & Hornborg, Lewis & Maslin, Todd & Davis and others). In a last cycle we will look at conceptual and methodological approaches (Entangled History and the Environment, World System Analysis, Social Metabolism) that may be able to connect the humanities with the natural sciences in order to come to a more inclusive perspective of the present and how we got to this point in history. This course is largely global in its geographical scope though it puts specific emphasis on the Americas in the pre-history of the Anthropocene. Its temporal scope reaches from the European Expansion to the present.

CIESIN is a non-profit corporation founded in 1989 to facilitate access to, use and understanding of global change information worldwide. As a consortium, CIESIN draws upon the expertise of universities, non-profit research organizations, government agencies, foundations and private corporations to meet the challenges of understanding environmental issues and advancing information technology and scientific research involving the human dimensions of global change. CIESIN is one of nine distributed data centers forming the data and information management component of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Earth Observing System (EOS). EOS is a network of remote sensing satellites and instruments dedicated to collecting essential data for studying Earth and its changing natural systems. EOS is part of the United States Global Change Research Program, which has been established to coordinate global change research efforts across all participating federal agencies. CIESIN has been commissioned by NASA to extend the benefits of EOS to a broad array of both international research and non-research users including policy makers, federal agencies, educators, resource managers and the general public. The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of NASA.

Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 2012

2010

Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University of Minnesota Press, 2013. x + 230 pp.

Ambio. A Journal of Environment and Society, 2021

There is no doubt about the profound crisis currently experienced by the industrial civilization that has exerted global dominium during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its foremost myths gradually collapsing one by one. The industrial growth has failed to visibly close the gap between the rich and the poor countries, thus clearly revealing the lack of connections made between economic growth, industrialization, and development. Neither were social inequalities abolished, although they dimmed during the peak of Fordism, currently reappearing with a particular virulence that is reaching to even a growing sector of the population of the rich countries (Milanovic 2003, 2006; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). The feeling of deprival of the myriads of commodities offered by the markets—now boosted by globalization—spreads throughout the world. This deprival becomes a powerful motivation that—contrasting with misery and violence—thrusts migratory movements that endanger the positional privileges of the affluent countries. The modes of political organization of the nineteenth and 20th centuries, which accompanied industrial capitalism, show unequivocal signs of exhaustion in front of the constant transference to transnational decision domains of important shares of sovereignty, at the same time that small cultural communities regain their political identities in reaction to the process of globalization. The orthodox paradigms of science—together with its hegemonic core of scientific-technological rationality—have for some time sinking into an irreversible crisis. Crisis also regarding many dominant values, while others appear that some have labeled as postmaterialistic, but that are maybe only expressing the need for a new moder-nity—as claimed by Beck (1998). But it is the ecological crisis what perhaps better depicts the civilization crisis, its severity and its planetary dimension, and what will surely force the adoption of highly relevant changes in the conformation of society. The greenhouse effect, the gap in the ozone layer, the exhaustion of mineral resources and fossil fuels, deforestation, overexploitation, the depletion of water resources, atmospheric pollution, acid rain, erosion and desertification, among others, are tightly linked with the modes of production and consumption brought about by economic growth and industrialization.

2007

2017