Anthropocene Anthropologies

optional courses

(in Polish) The course is intended for graduate students.

The Anthropocene is a term used to denote a new geological era – one defined by human-induced climate change, ocean acidification, species extinction, and other planetary transformations. This experimental new course explores this topic from a diversity of ethnographic and transdisciplinary perspectives. What social and political processes produce the Anthropocene? How are human relations with other living and non-living beings transformed? What are the possible or necessary responses? How is the Anthropocene experienced in specific ethnographic sites?

The Anthropocene has also been among the most generative concepts in the humanities and social science in recent years. This experimental new course explores this topic from a diversity of ethnographic and transdisciplinary perspectives, drawing on writings by anthropologists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, and others. Some of the key questions raised include: What social and political processes produce the Anthropocene? What are the possible or necessary responses to the dramatic planetary change? How is the Anthropocene experienced in specific ethnographic sites? What does it mean when we call the present Anthropocene, and might other terms be more accurate or productive, such as the Capitalocene? How are human relations with other living and non-living beings transformed? The plural form in the course title – Anthropocene Anthropologies – points to the diversity of approaches and understandings to be explored, but also to the variety of emerging ways of being human in this human-made age.

Preliminary reading list:

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. ‘The Climate of History: Four Theses’, Critical Inquiry 35(2):197-222.

2018. ‘Anthropocene Time’, History & Theory 57(1):5-32.

Ellis, Erle C. 2018. Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chtulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hecht, Gabrielle. 2018. ‘Interscalar Vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality, and Violence’, Cultural Anthropology 33(1):109 141.

Howe, Cymene. 2014. ‘Anthropocenic Ecoauthority: The Winds of Oaxaca’, Anthropological Quarterly 87(2):381-404.

Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Penguin Books.

Latour, Bruno. 2016. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity.

2018. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity.

Moore, Amelia. 2015. ‘Anthropocene Anthropology: Reconceptualizing Contemporary Global Change’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22:27 46.

Moore, Jason W. 2015a. ‘Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism’, in Jason W. Moore (ed.), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, 1 13. Oakland: PM Press.

2015b. ‘The Rise of Cheap Nature’, in Jason W. Moore (ed.), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, 78 115. Oakland: PM Press.

Swyngendouw, Eric. 2015. ‘Depoliticized Environments and the Promises of the Anthropocene’, in Raymond L. Bryant (ed.), The International Handbook of Political Ecology, 131 145. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Tsing, Anna L. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tsing, Anna L., Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt (eds). 2017. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Course essay (term paper) of 2,500 words. Students will be asked to submit 250-word abstracts of their prospective essays mid-semester. Students are free to pick a topic of their choice, as long as it speaks to the overall theme of the course. The essays should also engage with at least selected readings discussed during the semester, plus any other relevant literature (which the students will be expected to identify).

In addition, students will have the opportunity to volunteer to make a presentation on one of the required readings during the semester. A successful presentation equals half a grade up on the final score.