Search

Heritage relies, to a large extent, on notions of endangerment and consequential attempts to arrest or reverse processes of loss and change. The papers in this special issue engage critically with this underlying orientation, exploring the social and cultural work which is produced through efforts to avert loss. In doing so, the papers also point towards alternative ways of valuing objects, places and practices which are not solely determined by notions of endangerment and risk. We suggest three general themes which connect critical investigation of these issues across the varied natural and cultural heritage contexts through which these papers work – the inevitability of loss; the politics of loss; and the potential in loss. These themes have significant implications not only for the future of natural and cultural heritage preservation, conservation and management but also in mapping out future research directions for critical heritage studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial for our Special Issue, we focus on ways to better understand the role of organizations, organizing, and the organized during social and institutional change in response to disruption, division, and displacement. The papers in this Special Issue provide important insights into the hardships and heartache arising from social disruption, division, and displacement; in addition, they provide glimpses into potential ways of moving forward. To set the stage, we develop a framework building on extant literature that highlights several analytic approaches to understanding the consequences of eroding, or inadequate, institutions, the challenges of building anew when the status quo is destroyed, and what such novel and complex realities entail for organizational analysis. We offer a temporal view of responses to disruption, division, and displacement that draws on the papers in this Special Issue to identify and explain potential risks and challenges that arise at different points in time. To conclude, we provide a short summary of each paper, and call for a reinvigorated research agenda that goes beyond the excellent work featured here by broadening and deepening our focus on approaches to organizing that expressly address disruption, division, and displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present the concept of global citizenship from the perspective of virtue theory, namely as a disposition to do the right thing, for the right reason and in the right way. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, I show that global citizenship is a virtue that is needed to respond in the right way to the challenges that Anthropocenians meet. In the second part, I focus on the possibility of including the virtue of global citizenship in global education. I present arguments for including virtues in global education programmes and an example of a successful virtue education programme in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene has thrown at us a challenge of balancing urgency and justice. Urgency brought about by myriad environmental crises, most prominently being climate change, and justice that any adequate response to these crises needs to be rooted in. This is a dilemma because we need pathways for urgent action on climate mitigation and energy transitions while centring the slow and considered work that historical and contemporary justice questions demand. This is because while the Anthropocene calls humans to unite, its impacts have been, are, and will be, felt differently. The Anthropocene narrative's framing of a universal humanity connects to a long and dangerous history of what is human and what qualifies as humanity, a history of colonising, racializing, and dehumanising black, brown, and indigenous bodies around the world. We need narratives of the Anthropocene that confirm the importance of decolonising political, economic, and scientific institutions, not to deny urgency, but to foster a more political Anthropocene that creates space for new narratives of justice. The question then, that this paper initiates, is: How to progress anti–and de‐colonial thought for energy geographies within a somewhat colonising discourse of urgency in/of the Anthropocene? To think of energy geographies of/in the Anthropocene, one that explicitly embeds within itself justice, this paper outlines three areas of work. First, the paper proposes a need to engage with and learn from energy histories other than those from the Euro‐American contexts. Second, it urges more focus on the question of difference. Third, the paper proposes a deeper engagement with critical race theory and postcolonial/decolonial theories to investigate questions of justice. These proposals are provocations to open energy geographies to a wider range of questions, approaches, and concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key scientific publication demonstrates that the bio‐physical composition of the broiler chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) represents a signal of the Anthropocene. This finding contributes to a wider body of evidence that locates the beginning of the Anthropocene in the mid‐20th century, and is part of a broader intellectual project that seeks to establish and demarcate the Anthropocene as a new geological era. This paper takes a different tack. Treating Gallus gallus as an objective corollary for the Anthropocene, it positions the broiler chicken and the Anthropocene as an ontologically emergent nexus comprised of social–spatial relations, materialities, and practices. The paper then adopts critical nexus thinking to trace out the key relations and materialities, and their points of convergence, and underpinning extractivist ontologies that assemble into the chicken's body. Relations of particular concern include the processes that embody surplus value into the corporality of the chicken; the rationalisation and transformation of territories and landscapes into productive units of space, and the tightly coupled, interconnected flows of relations, materials, and coordinating technologies that comprise the 'supply chain'. It argues that by using critical nexus thinking to identify and articulate these relations that assemble into Gallus gallus, it renders the Anthropocene legible. Such legibility in turn fosters geographical awareness and responsibility that might lead to the changes necessary to address the large‐scale spatial inequalities from which the era stems and redress the consequences that the era might otherwise engender. Paper positions Gallus Gallus Domesticus ('The Broiler Chicken') as an objective corollary for the Anthropocene. It then employs critical nexus thinking to trace out its constituent relations and to fashion a geography of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deleuze/Guattari text Anti-Oedipus burst onto the intellectual scene in 1972 as a radical new means to reconceptualise capitalism and its effects. At the heart of Anti-Oedipus and its analysis of capitalism is the concept of deterritorialization, and how it evacuates identities, culture, values, and, indeed, coherent thought itself, and it makes them susceptible to the equations and dynamics of capital flows. Anti-Oedipus presents the mechanisms with respect to how deterritorialization interacts with and to an extent liberates desire as 'desiring-machines'. This philosophy of education paper applies the workings of deterritorialization and desire from Anti-Oedipus to the dynamics of contemporary climate change education and the Anthropocene. As such, it posits this dynamic as being critical to present day approaches to the philosophy of education that wish to engage with capitalism and its effects, and at the same time positively enter the climate change debate. This paper suggests that understanding the matrix of deterritorialization, desire, climate change and learning, is perhaps the most important work that can be performed in the philosophy of education today and with respect to the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Logos: A Journal, of Religion, Philosophy Comparative Cultural Studies & Art (08687692) is the property of Logos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST) is the property of Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

'Diaspora' is a term that has undergone transformation throughout history. In its original sense, it referred to the Jewish population residing outside of their native land in Palestine. In its current usage, it encompasses any dispersion of people or linguistic and cultural phenomena originating from a localized source. The transnational narrative of Gun Island parallels the dispersion of both human and non-human animals caused by human-induced climate change. Humans migrate for various reasons, including environmental factors and economic opportunities, while non-human animals migrate solely due to pervasive climate change in the Anthropocene. This study argues that the novel invites readers to rethink the global perspective of diaspora from a more inclusive and ecological standpoint, recognizing that nonhuman animals also exhibit some features common to human diaspora groups. Examples include displacement from original habitats, encountering challenges in new environments, and bearing cultural or ecological relevance for source regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Posthuman Ecology, anthropocentrism, based on the binary division between the privileged human and the 'other', gets deconstructed, leading to an acknowledgment of humans as essentially tangled in an intricate web of the natural world. In such ecologies, boundaries between the human and the more-than-human (non-human) worlds become porous, creating fluid identities and conditions of being within a framework of active interplay between the human and the non-human world. The ecology of folktales is replete with Posthumanism, as their narratives consistently break the unbridgeable gap between the human, non-human, and the spiritual and/or supernatural worlds and present certain non-naturalist ontologies that are mostly at odds with naturalism or modern empirical science. Such tales provided much-needed templates for sustainable development in the time of the Anthropocene. This paper attempts to study Easterine Kire's When the River Sleeps (2014) as a posthumanist narrative where Vilie (a hunter) goes on a fantastical journey to find a fabled magical stone from the bottom of the 'sleeping river'. Vilie's journey comes out as a playground for both mundane and fantastic elements. He grows as a human being, and this happens as he transacts with the non-human and the supernatural world and comes across deep metaphysical questions and presents keys to understanding balance-in-transcendence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Postscriptum Polonistyczne is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Posthumanism as an ontological philosophy contemplates the nature of reality and existence, and the notions of being and becoming in a techno-modified world. Posthumanism displaces man from his privileged position as the master of his universe and generates multiplicity of interpretations and theoretical perspectives. Technological and evolutionary theories of human enhancement and radical life-extension, constructed around the idea of the posthuman, position man firmly within his material milieu where he co-habits with other non-human life forms. The traditional notion of the human body as a sacrosanct entity has given way to the concept of the human as an embodied and embedded being. Technological posthumanism debilitates the grand narrative of anthropocentricsm and celebrates plurality, hybridity and diversity as the defining traits of future humanity. In the age of the Anthropocene, humans have evolved into a geological force directly influencing and determining the fate of millions of non-human species. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of the corporeal frame hastening our march towards the posthuman era as we seek ways to transcend the limitations of our body with the aid of technology. The proposed paper tries to understand how the pandemic has reconstituted traditional notions of the corporeal self, human subjectivity and identity in the age of the Anthropocene. The paper would also consider technology as an ontological manifestation, in the specific context of the pandemic, focusing on its potential to re-engineer 'human' in anticipation of the posthuman future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the extent to which imaginaries of climate and ecological breakdown attend to the memories, knowledges, and experiences of communities already impacted by histories of racism, colonialism, and poverty. Drawing on insights from Black studies and decolonial thinking, the article reflects on how the causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change can be mapped onto geographies of racialised violence and social dispossession. Specific emphasis is given to Rio de Janeiro, notably its port area, a geographical space where future-oriented narratives remain oblivious to the city's history of anti-Black violence and Indigenous genocide. In parallel, the paper looks at the recently built Museum of Tomorrow and its public representations of the Anthropocene. Overall, the article contends that pluralising accounts of the Anthropocene might offer alternative epistemic entry points for understanding and interrupting the mounting ecological catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of 'abyssal geography'. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2022 Special Report on Human Security "calls for greater solidarity across borders and a new approach to development; one that allows people to live free from want, fear, anxiety and indignity". This paper analyses the notion of "freedom from want" and argues that human "want", understood from one cultural perspective/worldview, has created the market society with its GDP growth narrative. Such "want" could become the very reason for perceived insecurity, anxiety and indignity, if the "want" is not only to meet the basic human needs, but rather to meet desires artificially fuelled by a market society with its increasingly sophisticated tools, such as digital technology which implicitly manipulate our "wants" and rationalise them within the GDP-growth narrative. This paper proposes a policy shift from focusing on GDP growth to a new paradigm of human flourishment which allows for a "good life" for all (wo)mankind by capitalising on the concept of relational wellbeing. Relational wellbeing advocates for deep connections between humans, and between humans and nature, thereby achieving a greater global solidarity between people and a new mindset towards nature. The next generation of human security shall go beyond the aim of making people secure, and rather focus on how to enable humanity to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a product of the Anthropocene, and the human–nature system in which we live. Effective climate change adaptation requires that we acknowledge this complexity. Theoretical literature on sustainability transitions has highlighted this and called for deeper acknowledgment of systems complexity in our research practices. Are we heeding these calls for 'systems' research? We used hydrohazards (floods and droughts) as an example research area to explore this question. We first distilled existing challenges for complex human–nature systems into six central concepts: Uncertainty, multiple spatial scales, multiple time scales, multimethod approaches, human–nature dimensions, and interactions. We then performed a systematic assessment of 737 articles to examine patterns in what methods are used and how these cover the complexity concepts. In general, results showed that many papers do not reference any of the complexity concepts, and no existing approach addresses all six. We used the detailed results to guide advancement from theoretical calls for action to specific next steps. Future research priorities include the development of methods for consideration of multiple hazards; for the study of interactions, particularly in linking the short- to medium-term time scales; to reduce data-intensivity; and to better integrate bottom–up and top–down approaches in a way that connects local context with higher-level decision-making. Overall this paper serves to build a shared conceptualisation of human–nature system complexity, map current practice, and navigate a complexity-smart trajectory for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accepting that nature and culture are intricately co-evolved has profound implications for the ethical, legal, philosophical and pragmatic dimensions of social and environmental policy. The way we think about nature affects how we understand and manage ecosystems. While the ideals of preserving wilderness and conserving ecosystems have motivated much conservation effort to date, achieving these ideals may not be feasible under Anthropocene conditions unless communities accept custodial responsibilities for landscapes and other species. This paper's origins are in the author's work with the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council representing Indigenous traditional owners in Australia's Kimberley region. These landscapes, shaped by 60,000 years of human occupation, interweave knowledge, laws and governance regimes, and material and spiritual connections with country. This interweaving offers insights into options for dealing with humanity's complex sustainability challenges. The paper also draws on the literature about cultural landscapes, ecological design, agroecology and permaculture to explore options for applying ecological design as a planning and problem-solving framework. The paper concludes that design-based approaches offer significant opportunities for using ecological science to integrate conservation and production in agricultural landscapes in ways that can meet human needs while also conserving biodiversity under climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging an undeniable need for innovation, this paper offers a qualitative assessment for recognition and policy advocacy for superior innovations—for new wood products and processes offering more benefits and fewer drawbacks than other innovations. The paper highlights the irrationality of using the limited natural and human-made goods of the world to produce and consume inferior innovations, especially when they fail to mitigate or, in fact, contribute to worsening climate change. Raymond Williams' "structures of feeling" are used to disclose evaluative commitments associated with the "new" characteristic of industrialized and indigenous civilizations toward illuminating potential pathways for halting an otherwise seemingly unstoppable engine of climate change from pushing all of life on Earth over its precipice. Discussing how the "new" is always implicated in the "old," decision-making and design methods applicable over the whole of the value chain are proposed for generating "new" innovations and processes that are genuinely able to change the current world trajectory of our species. Future research is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to shed some light on current biopolitics of food and environmental security by analyzing the strategy of Integrated pest management (IPM). IPM is an ecological form of pest management that emerged in the United States in the 1950s in response to the pesticide crisis and now informs numerous pesticide legislations around the world. The paper analyzes IPM as a governmental hinge that aims to reconcile the conflicting goals of food security and environmental security. To this end, the paper makes three intertwined arguments. First, through an examination of scientific texts from the field of economic entomology, the paper shows how biological and chemical pest control methods are produced as two conflicting materialities that must be mediated. In a second step, the text shows how economically defined thresholds and cost-benefit analyzes are used to level the difference between these two materialities and make them commensurable. Finally, it elaborates how IPM aims primarily at transforming farmers' practices. The use of chemicals in agriculture is to be reduced by transforming farmers into calculating subjects. Overall, the article aims to show how IPM, as an important element of contemporary ecological governmentality, seeks to realize positive environmental effects in the quantitative medium of economics and science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disaster risk reduction (DRR) community tends to treat disasters and risks in a managerial and technocratic way, thereby disregarding the highly political nature of DRR. An alternative epistemology of disasters, as "matters of concern", is proposed and tested. Mobilizing concepts from Chantal Mouffe and Bruno Latour, this paper illustrates how DRR can be transformed into a public issue. It is argued that education and policymaking on DRR would benefit from a recognition of the hybrid nature of disasters. A serious game is used to investigate proposed epistemology. The board game simulates political decision-making on the reduction of risks due to floods and landslides in South-West Uganda. It is hypothesized that the game can generate an ideal speech scenario that fosters discussions among players and possibly even creates a space of political confrontation. Discussions during ten gameplays have been recorded, transcribed and analyzed (1) to understand how the dominant epistemology facilitates an apolitical approach to disasters and (2) to understand the process of politicization and de-politicization brought about when playing the board game in order to derive recommendations for future tools to facilitate a political appreciation of disasters. Our results indicate that participants effectively experience affects, power relations and confrontations during the game, but that a call for consensus and technical solutions is used by the players to close the discussions and move on with concrete solutions. Insights from this paper contribute to understanding why DRR is frequently treated as a technical issue in local and international disaster governance. Epistemology and approaches proposed in this paper are expected to stimulate innovative experiments towards a more political approach to DRR education and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature of utopia in the context of our apocalyptic present. Drawing on Evan Calder Williams' concepts of salvagepunk, it interprets the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon as a (post)apocalyptic metropolis. It excavates the origins of Iquitos in genocidal violence and extractivist destruction, deconstructs the modernising megaprojects designed to rescue the city from its isolated status, and explores the subaltern forms of its everyday production. In doing so, the paper problematises accelerationist and pluriversal fantasies of escape from planetary socioecological breakdown, and discerns an apocalyptic utopia emerging at the urban cutting edge of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows young people's shifting sense of inheritance in the context of the environmental and ontological crises of the epoch named the Anthropocene. It discusses a research project in which young people were invited to work critically and creatively with a British university museum to explore its storerooms and exhibits. The ethnographic and artistic engagements led to the curation of a 'cabinet of curiosities' within the museum itself. We use the concept of atmosphere to examine the ways in which space, time, and affect entangle with museological practices of curiosity, care, and curation to produce particular feelings and figurations of inheritance. We propose atmospheric attunement as a means of critically and care-fully examining and re-curating the inheritance of the Anthropocene, including the failures and absences due to colonial disinheritance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to demonstrate the critical utility of the concept of the absurd in the exploration of the combined and uneven apocalypse known as the Anthropocene. Drawing inspiration from absurdist literature, and based on extensive field research, it takes the form of a psychogeographical journey down a non-existent highway in the Peruvian Amazon. The route of this long-promised megaproject is inhabited by people adrift in the midst of meaningless ruins, haunted by spectral infrastructures that were promised but never came, and plagued by monstrous apparitions of extractive violence. Consistent with absurdist method, the paper resists the temptation to leap out of this disconcerting domain into the normalizing rituals of academic sensemaking, and aims instead to grasp and convey the disorienting lived experience of 'space out of joint'. In doing so, it suggests that an absurdist sensibility can contribute to current debates in cultural geography on spectrality, psychogeography, and creative writing, through its emphasis on irrationality and indeterminacy, its exploration of chaotic and disintegrating spaces, and its evocation of fragmentation and disjuncture in the form of jagged shards of stark and vivid prose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses perceptions of the climate crisis by newsworkers of Slovenian (online) media and their news coverage of this topic. Through qualitative analysis of the in-depth interviews, the paper offers insights into the attitudes, perceptions, and motivations of selected Slovenian journalists and editors about climate change reporting and new insights into journalism practice and environmental journalism in Slovenia in terms of the peculiarities and contextual factors that can influence coverage of extreme weather events and climate change. The results show that the environmental and climate topics are underrepresented in Slovenian media, and these topics are covered in accordance with newsworthiness and public liking factors, and marketing neoliberal pressures to sell the news and make a profit. Such a commercialization and popularization of environmental journalism might lead to the passiveness of the audiences since it does not mobilize public awareness but rather represents the environmental topic as just another story in the media. The lack of analytical depth, critical problematization, wider contextualization of climate change, and the exaltation of journalistic norms of dramatization, eventization, noveltyization, and personalization prevent grasping the problem holistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endocene, derived from the prefix endo- (the Greek endon means inner or inside), transcends conventional geological perspectives to reflect on our entangled relationship with the environment. The Endocene redirects our attention to the micro-scale of our cells and molecules altered by industrial chemicals. With an emphasis on involuntary chronic exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals affecting neurodevelopment and brain function, the Endocene examines the shifting physiology of our perception, cognition, and emotional experiences. What do our feelings, caused and modulated by anthropogenic compounds, tell us about our synthetic becoming in the Endocene? What are the critical and political potentials of thinking with and acting upon these emotions? Using artistic research methods and drawing on visual culture studies and environmental humanities, this paper examines the intricate interplay between anthropogenic action and the biosphere, providing a critical lens through which to grasp the profound implications of industrialization on biological and emotional landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the video game Plasticity as a compelling narrative medium that represents and critiques the ecological ramifications of plastic consumption in the Anthropocene era. The game’s dystopian setting, where players navigate through environments devastated by plastic waste, serves as a metaphor for the real-world issues of waste management and environmental neglect. By integrating theories from material ecocriticism and close gaming methodologies, this paper analyses Plasticity both as a piece of eco-fiction and as an interactive experience that challenges players to reflect on their own consumption habits. The game’s design and player agency are highlighted as tools that expose the often invisible consequences of waste disposal practices. I argue that Plasticity utilizes the concept of Chthulucene aesthetics, which I define as an approach that embraces ecological entanglement and multispecies perspectives, challenging traditional views of beauty by finding harmony in environmental disturbances and the interconnectedness of all life forms, to illuminate the strategic invisibility of plastic waste. The analysis reveals the game’s potential to open a space for interpretation of what remains in the dark by practices dictated as normal in terms of plastic waste disposal practices in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene draws from a critical selection of the 54 papers presented at the second International MoHoA conference Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene, (October 26–28, 2022), hosted by The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, in partnership with the University of Liverpool's School of Architecture. The conference expanded MoHoA's aim of encouraging equitable approaches to modern heritage as an urgent and essential response to an age of planetary crises whose roots are entangled with centuries‐old culture of extraction, exploitation, and domination. Building on the lessons learned from the first MoHoA conference, Modern Heritage of Africa (2021), hosted by the University of Cape Town and the subject of an earlier special edition of Curator (65/July 3, 2022), this second conference emphasized the interconnection between these cultures and the dawn of the Anthropocene. Participants were asked to reflect on reconceptualized formulations of modern heritage and its entangled relationship with the planetary crises experienced, albeit unevenly and unequally, by all living and nonliving things. This paper assembles and reflects on the contributions of 18 peer‐reviewed papers that collectively demonstrate the range and depth of topics presented. In the spirit of equity, diversity, and inclusivity and in line with MoHoA's decentering, decolonizing, and reframing agenda, these have also been chosen to reflect the different contributors' experiences, from senior academics to young and early career professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the exponential expansion of human activities, humanity has become the driving force of global environmental change. The consequent global sustainability crisis has been described as a result of a uniquely human form of adaptability and niche construction. In this paper, we introduce the concept of social-ecological niche construction focusing on biophysical interactions and outcomes. We use it to address destructive processes and to discuss potential regenerative ones as ways to overcome them. From a niche construction point of view, the increasing disconnections between human activities and environmental feedbacks appear as a success story in the history of human–nature coevolution because they enable humans to expand activities virtually without being limited by environmental constraints. However, it is still poorly understood how suppressed environmental feedbacks affect future generations and other species, or which lock-ins and self-destructive dynamics may unfold in the long-term. This is crucial as the observed escape from natural selection requires growing energy input and represents a temporal deferral rather than an actual liberation from material limitations. Relying on our proposal, we conclude that, instead of further taming nature, there is need to explore the potential of how to tame socio-metabolic growth and impact in niche construction processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that the development, uptake and adoption of innovations resembles an evolutionary process of variation, selection and retention (within broader processes of co-evolution) in which actors are myopically caught. We do so in four steps. First, we review in what ways socio-technical evolution resembles biological evolution. Second, we argue that in socio-technical evolution so-called 'configurations that work' can be viewed as evolutionary units, which are subject to selection pressures, variation and human-made couplings between variation and selection. This explains why innovation is often cumulative, based on variation and recombination. Third, we discuss how producers, consumers, governments and scientists are myopically caught in processes of co-evolution. While humans are capable of imagining the need for system change and details of desired systems, they are less capable of accepting the concomitant higher costs and inconveniences and adopt new interpretive schemes. Fourth, in a pluralist world, steering is done by all kind of actors, including those who actively resist transformative change. Because of this, steering by government and coalitions of change can achieve little more than a modulation of ongoing dynamics, despite disturbing evidence of a run-away climate, mass extinction, pervasive ecological degradation and steady depletion of resources. A new consciousness of the Anthropocene can evoke fundamental changes in science and the economy if—and only if—they are sufficiently carried by institutional changes and new practices. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropocene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social–ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be fully developed. Formal evolutionary theory has been applied as a dynamic theory of change of complex phenomena in biology and the social sciences, but rarely in SES research. In this paper, we explore the connections between both fields, hoping to foster collaboration. After sketching out the distinct intellectual traditions of SES research and evolutionary theory, we map some of their terminological and theoretical connections. We then provide examples of how evolutionary theory might be incorporated into SES research through the use of systems mapping to identify evolutionary processes in SES, the application of concepts from evolutionary developmental biology to understand the connections between systems changes and evolutionary changes, and how evolutionary thinking may help design interventions for beneficial change. Integrating evolutionary theory and SES research can lead to a better understanding of SES changes and positive interventions for a more sustainable Anthropocene. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amitav Ghosh entitles the opening section of his nonfiction on climate change The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2017) as "Stories." Here, Ghosh highlights the significance of stories and storytelling practices in re-imagining our age of global warming and climate change. He displays how stories function as stimuli for the resurgence of our imaginative power to re-cognize the "unthinkable", the non-human world and the intricate relations between humans, nonhumans and the natural environment. Drawing upon the insightful studies of the ecological aesthetics of stories and storytelling in the age of Anthropocene, the paper discusses how environmental storytelling as part of indigenous orality is reinvented by Ghosh in his latest fiction The Living Mountain: A Fable for Our Times (2022) which tends to look at the Anthropocene through the prism of empire and capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of information literacy (IL) research, the Anthropocene age offers an opportunity for researchers to explore to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complexity of information literacy which result from rapid and complex social, political and economic change; to address the risk of societal fragmentation which is created by misinformation/disinformation; and to understand the risk to democratically encouraged information environments that will come with increasing incorporation of AI and opinion-driven social platforms into everyday life. For library practitioners who provide instruction or education, challenges exist in relation to scaffolding and encouraging sustainable, transferrable information and technological practices, not only in our own inward facing professional practice but in our outward facing practice with the myriad communities we support. Against this problematisation, this brief, but broad ranging paper aims to identify a range of questions for thinking about the practice of IL in the Anthropocenic age. No attempt is made to answer these questions, instead they act as an impetus for future researchers and practitioner researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What stories of religion matter in the age of the Anthropocene? This paper begins by situating the Abundance Crochet Coral Reef, an installation of crocheted coralline landscapes exhibited at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, as a methodological motif and enactment to think creatively about and with the study of religion in the Anthropocene. Journeying through the current trends in various fields in the study of religion that are responsive to Anthropocene concerns, I argue that there is a growing body of scholarly work that troubles the dualisms and hierarchies of humannature and nature-culture that have informed, and indeed, dominated, conceptualizations about religion and the study of religion. Finally, I turn to feminist theory to continue to in-tune religion storytelling (the study of religion) to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Drawing inspiration from the Abundance Crochet Coral Reef, I explore the concept of kinship to open creative vistas for methodological enrichment in the study of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show how the dire state of the Earth's rivers entangles intimately with 'thingifying' processes at the heart of colonial modernity. Known in many precolonial and Indigenous contexts as person‐like kin, we describe how rivers the world over have been re‐done primarily as thing—amoral, controllable, a potential commodity like anything else.We develop and work with a provisory concept of kin as those constituents of environments that reciprocally nurture, and contribute to the substance of, one another's life and wellbeing.We show how kinship with rivers figures centrally in primarily Indigenous‐led struggles in various regions of the globe for the recognition and enforcement of river personhood and rights. This is partly because people are motivated to fight passionately for their kin.With some careful caveats, we argue that associating river kinship exclusively with Indigenous worlds undermines its potential for global impact. Thus, as an apposite case study, the latter part of the paper focuses on some of the social–ecological trends which we suggest are opening up the possibility for the re‐establishment of 'riverkinship' in the United Kingdom.We reflect on the potential for riverkinship to help cultivate political constellations fitting to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene is defined by marked acceleration in human-induced perturbations to the Earth system. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and attendant changes to the global carbon cycle are among the most profound and pervasive of these perturbations. Determining the magnitude, nature and pace of these carbon cycle changes is crucial for understanding the future climate that ecosystems and humanity will experience and need to respond to. This special issue illustrates the value of radiocarbon as a tool to shed important light on the nature, magnitude and pace of carbon cycle change. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Radiocarbon in the Anthropocene'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A good deal of contemporary work in cultural evolutionary theory focuses on the adaptive significance of culture. In this paper, we make the case that scientifically accurate and politically feasible responses to the climate crisis require a complex understanding of human cultural practices of niche construction that moves beyond the adaptive significance of culture. We develop this thesis in two related ways. First, we argue that cumulative cultural practices of niche construction can generate stable equilibria and runaway selection processes that result in long-term existential risks within and across cultural groups. We dub this the back of the invisible hand. Second, we argue that the ability of cultural groups to innovate technological solutions to environmental problems is highly constrained in ways that are exacerbated by sustained intergroup conflict, inequality and by inherently unpredictable cascades in climate change and human migration patterns. After developing these theoretical points about human cultural practices of niche construction in detail, we conclude our discussion with some tentative practical suggestions about the way that cultural evolutionary history can more fruitfully be used in efforts to remit the climate crisis and contribute to sustainable practices of human climate change adaptation. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene term invokes the multiple temporalities through which organisms, ecologies, and environments unfold – from the immediacy of the present moment to the sedimentary timescales of the geological record. Viewed from the perspective of anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation, these organisms, ecologies, and environments, including the planet's human occupants, may well benefit if we took a view of time that was more-than-human in scope and scale. This paper demonstrates how design, creative practice, and technology can be used to make legible human and more-than-human timescales through local, planetary, and celestial imaginaries that are congruent with the Anthropocene term. It first considers various anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic phenomena that are used for time keeping, both human and non-human. It then discusses the design and development of a timepiece that uses observations of environmental light to imaginatively situate daily life within various temporal scales, from embodied, diurnal, circalunar, and annual to the sedimentary timescales of the geological record. Through the timepiece, the paper argues that a hybrid form of timekeeping that brings together human time standards and environmental observation could help align the temporal imaginaries of urban societies with biological, ecological, and planetary processes, while highlighting the presence of potentially damaging anthropogenic processes, such as artificial light at night. Such hybrid forms of timekeeping may help foster meaningful relationships between people and the environment, facilitate day-to-day awareness of the presence and extent of disruptive anthropogenic processes in our environments and provide an imaginative framework for thinking about urban time and life in an Anthropocene context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the concept of environmental political philosophy and from its perspective, it highlights the weaknesses and contradictions of contemporary, existing democracies. It aims to formulate an outline of the concept of environmental democracy, following the accounts of M. Bookchin, R. Morrison and H. Skolimowski, as well as international environmental law enshrined in United Nations documents and resolutions. It is based on the hypothesis that the preservation of a democratic political system in a situation of a collapsing planetary system (the Anthropocene) requires improving the foundations of democratic theory with the insights of the Earth system sciences, particularly of political ecology and critical environmentalism. Through philosophical analysis, explanation and interpretation, this paper explores an environmental democracy that would, on the one hand, preserve the basic constitutional principles of current democratic constitutional regimes, and, on the other hand, reconcile them with the current state of understanding in the Earth sciences concerning the vulnerability of the planetary system. In a sense, J. Habermas's understanding of human rights characterizes the concept of environmental democracy as a realistic utopia. The author concludes by drawing up the imperative of sustainability, which he sees as a guiding organizing principle of institutions and public policies for the climatic, demographic and economic regime of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to problematize the need for debate in operationalizing the planetary boundaries framework when accounting for the Anthropocene. Design/methodology/approach: This paper's aim is achieved through a literature review focusing on the assumptions around the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries and organizations. The author conducted an integrated review of 91 documents discussing the operationalization of the planetary boundaries framework and the need for debate. Findings: This paper develops two major findings. First, the author identifies the four main dimensions of the planetary boundaries that need to be debated: social, normative, narrative and control aspects. Second, the author exposes proposals in the literature that have the potential to fuel the debate, but which are themselves a source of debate. Practical implications: This paper argues that, while being scientifically informed, the planetary boundaries framework leaves decision-makers with critical choices and decisions that need to be openly debated. This paper identifies some relevant proposals for doing so. Social implications: This paper underlines the need to open forums of debate for scientists and other stakeholders to raise the democratic legitimacy of the planetary boundaries framework. Originality/value: To the best of the author's knowledge, this is one of the very first papers to investigate dimensions of the planetary boundaries that need to be debated to respond to the challenge of its operationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and develops the concept of "reflexive peacebuilding". Peacebuilding has been conceptualised using different theoretical frameworks and operationalised across various levels of governance. This paper re-conceptualises peacebuilding in the context of the growing discourse on the Anthropocene. Drawing on the work of John S. Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering (2019. The Politics of the Anthropocene. Oxford: Oxford University Press) on reflexivity in the Anthropocene, this paper locates the "pathological path dependency" of international peacebuilding and the need for reflexive peacebuilding institutions across the agency, time, and space of peace formation. It specifically examines the United Nations peacebuilding architecture to identify the path dependency and potential for reflexivity of its institutions and practices. The discussion in this paper aims to contribute to recommendations for restructuring the international peacebuilding architecture and re-affirming its relevance to the evolving peace requirements of post-conflict societies, especially in the context of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates how the two major competing frameworks in the debates over framing our geological epoch – the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene – are unified in the reproduction of a Eurocentric assumption that functions to confirm the historical priority of Euro-Western geological agency, the corollary of which is the rendering derivative of non-European peoples as lacking in such capacity until mobilized by Euro-Western forces. Rather than assume that humanity in general, or colonial capitalism more specifically, has generated a novel geological epoch by disrupting the 'natural' temporal divide between deep geological time, medium run biological time, and human history, this paper argues for a more co-constitutive relation between geological, biological, and social space-times. Locating ourselves within an irreducible socio-bio-geological space-time, we re-encounter the earth as multiple earth-worldings co-constituted by Indigenous and Black peoples in ways that precede, and exceed, the hitherto understood to be 'originary' geological capacity of Euro-Western colonial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by growing calls for the equitable recognition of other experiences—especially non-white and non-western—in the historiography of the modern era, this paper explores the themes of transnational architectural practice and cosmopolitanism through the lens of cultural heritage—specifically modern heritage—and how values are ascribed, invariably asymmetrically, to the tangible and intangible legacies of our recent past. In deference to the theme of Cosmopolitanism's Others, the paper argues for equitable histories not merely as an intellectual exercise, but as a prerequisite to attaining just and sustainable futures. One small step in this direction is the formulation of The Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage (2022) under the auspices of the global collaborative, MoHoA (Modern Heritage of Africa/Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene), a decentring and restitutive framework for an equitable and sustainable approach to the theory and practice of modern heritage in a planetary age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt to understand the current policy response to tackle air pollution in Delhi, India. It takes a human security approach to challenge some of the mainstream assumptions which inform the current top-down policy response. Then it tries to provide openings for a more holistic policy foundation based on our discussion on the literature about human and environmental security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]