Resources

Keywords and Readings in Anthropocene research

Anthropos

How do we frame humanity in the Anthropocene?

Understanding humans as a geological agent does not mean to eliminate the differences within humankind – the differences of gender, race, affluence, health, including the inequalities in the access to technology, lifestyles and forms of consumption. It also does not imply a new Anthropocentrism. On the contrary, it means to...

Biodiversity

The basis of life on Earth as we know it

The Anthropocene is characterised by unprecedented changes to the environment caused by human actions that affect ecosystems and the natural world. Anthropogenic drivers severely accelerate climate change and biodiversity loss, such that scientists have identified the massive decline of biological diversity as a major cause...

Climate Change

Facing the challenge of climate change

Climate change is a key issue in the Anthropocene and helps illustrating what it means that humans have become a “geophysical force” and a “geological agent” in our time (see Anthropos). Anthropogenic climate change was what Paul Crutzen had in mind, more than anything else, when he proposed the term “Anthropocene” back in 2000...

Deep Time

What is Deep Time?

Deep time and its interference with human time are key issues in the Anthropocene. What is deep time? And how do we interfere with it today in ways that are characteristic of the Anthropocene? In the history of science, deep time is a relatively recent discovery. Generally, what we mean by deep time is geological time or cosmic time, in other...

Earth System

A new way of conceiving human-nature relations

The Earth system has fundamentally changed our perspective on human-nature relations in the Anthropocene. Older concepts such as “nature” or the “environment” may still have their own particular charm. But they create a dualism between the Anthropos and the Earth. The Earth system integrates the atmosphere...

Energy

Effects of human energy consumption world-wide

The material culture of the Anthropocene is based on the burning of fossil fuels. — Think about it! Which of your daily activities do not, in one way or another, involve the burning of fossil fuels? Mobility and transport are based on it. Using your car to go to work in the morning is an obvious case: burning fossil fuel is what...

Environmental History

What are the objectives of environmental history?

Environmental history is a relatively young field of study within the spectrum of historical disciplines. It has emerged along with growing environmental concerns and the environmental movement since the late 1960s. The contours of environmental history first shaped in the United States, before it drew attention in Europe. Today...

Governance

What is the Anthropocene's political potential?

While the Anthropocene is a well-established scientific category, what is its political potential? Outside academic circles the Anthropocene is only beginning to enter public awareness. The circle of politicians familiar with the idea and its implications is broadening gradually. For Klaus Töpfer, former executive director of...

Material Culture

Material culture is changing dramatically

The enormous variety of materials we make use of today is already mirrored in the most recent sediments that the geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group are analyzing. What their high-resolution stratigraphy for the 20th-century brings to the fore is a huge number of technofossils. They reflect the evolution of the...

Nature

Rethinking the dualism between nature and culture

In the Anthropocene, Earth has been “modified by human action” (George Perkins Marsh) to such an extent that some have proclaimed “the end of nature” (Bill McKibben), or a complete transformation of nature into culture. About 250 years ago, many Enlightenment philosophers and naturalists contemplated the idea of...

Risk

The Anthropocene is an era of rapidly changing risks

At first glance, this may look like nothing new under the sun. Theorists of “risk society”, like Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, have described preoccupation with the future as one of the trademarks of “reflexive modernity”. The notion of risk is a common way of assessing the likelihood of a certain outcome of our future actions...

Starting Dates

When has the Anthropocene begun?

Starting dates of the Anthropocene induced an extremely diverse discussion across academic disciplines, from the natural sciences to history, sociology and politics. This discussion centres on the question when human impact on the Earth system, and especially on geological processes, started to be significant and fundamental...

Stratigraphy

The science of geological layers

The geological subdiscipline of stratigraphy is asked to define the Anthropocene as a new unit of Earth history. Stratigraphy deals with geological layers and beds, with the law of superposition (older layers were deposited below younger ones). A definition for the base of a formally defined Anthropocene as a unit of the...

Technosphere

The technosphere is the realm of technology

Machines, factories, computers, cars, buildings, the railway, all mobility infrastructure etc. Today, we use technology to produce food, to extract material resources, to convert and distribute energy so it can be used in society, to enable other than mere face-to-face communication, and for many other purposes. The totality of…

The Planetary

Human beings are altering the Earth collectively

Of course, there are differences: some are making a much greater impact than others (ecological footprint). But as the “human web” (John & William McNeill) spans around the globe, the sum of anthropogenic changes has become a dominating geophysical force altering the planet. This planetary dimension...