The Environmental Humanities and the Futures of the Human

Bibliographic Data

ID4070544
AuthorsUrsula K Heise (corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume43
Issue2
Pages21-31
Publication date2016-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/0094033x-3511847
OpenAlexW2520545777
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited15

The environmental humanities have emerged over the last decade as a new interdisciplinary matrix that connects environmentally oriented research in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. This new area of research defines ecological issues as social and cultural rather than scientific and technological. In the process, controversies have emerged around the concept of the Anthropocene, whose emphasis on the planetary agency of the human species conflicts with Marxist analyses of socioeconomic inequality and with posthumanist approaches that question the exceptionality of the human subject. The project of the environmental humanities emerges from the critique of dominant natural science concepts combined with the creative effort to shape new stories beyond environmental decline narratives, including speculative and utopian stories, that can engage a wider public in shaping the future

Agency (philosophy · Anthropocene · Environmental ethics · Futures contract · Humanities · Inequality · Narrative · Social inequality · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy