Earthing the Anthropos? From 'socializing the Anthropocene' to geologizing the social

Bibliographic Data

ID2398147
AuthorsN Clark (0000-0002-6666-1739, Lancaster University, corresponding author), Yasmin Gunaratnam (0000-0002-9025-4981, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)
Year2017
Volume20
Issue1
Pages146-163
Publication date2017-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1368431016661337
OpenAlexW2485709217
LanguageEN
Citations received30
References cited34

Responding to claims of Anthropocene geoscience that humans are now geological agents, social scientists are calling for renewed attention to the social, cultural, political and historical differentiation of the Anthropos. But does this leave critical social thought's own key concepts and categories unperturbed by the Anthropocene provocation to think through dynamic earth processes? Can we 'socialize the Anthropocene' without also opening 'the social' to climate, geology and earth system change? Revisiting the earth science behind the Anthropocene thesis and drawing on social research that is using climatology and earth systems thinking to help understand socio-historical change, this article explores some of the possibilities for 'geologizing' social thought. While critical social thought's attention to justice and exclusion remains vital, it suggests that responding to Anthropocene conditions also calls for a kind of 'geo-social' thinking that relates human diversity and social difference to the potentiality and multiplicity of the earth itself

Anthropocene · Earth system science · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Philosophy · Ecology