Abstract
It is with great pleasure that I introduce Volume 2.3 of The Anthropocene Review, my first having taken over as Editor from Professor Frank Oldfield earlier this year.
I first wish to thank Frank. Together with the support of the Associate Editors, and the journal team more broadly, he has invested a significant amount of time and energy, and substantial intellectual capital, in order to position the journal in centre stage for some of the strongest scholarship on a wide range of issues concerned with the Anthropocene. The journal has published an impressive array of papers to date, produced by authors drawn from the earth and environmental and social sciences, and from the arts and humanities and addressing a breadth of interdisciplinary and often controversial themes. I am fortunate to be taking on the Editorial role, at an obviously exciting time in Anthropocene thinking, and with the journal in such a strong position. I very much look forward to working with our broad audience in order to continue the good work that has been achieved so far.
Like those preceding it, this issue includes a welcome mix of papers that focus on a range of approaches to and perspectives on the Anthropocene. We begin with a review paper produced by Mark Williams and colleagues in which the authors encourage reflection on the different stages of biospheric evolution: microbial, metazoan and the modern. With respect to the latter stage, the authors question whether the earth has evolved a new ‘Anthropocene biosphere’, on the basis of four key parameters: global homogenisiation of flora and fauna; human expropriation of a significant proportion of net primary production and also the production of energy through fossil fuel burning; human directed evolution of plants and animals; and finally, increasing interaction between the biosphere and the technosphere. Providing a series of sustained arguments focused around these four parameters, the authors highlight a potential ‘new trajectory for the biosphere that could last hundreds of millions of years’.
John Dearing and colleagues confront the challenge of understanding change in complex socio-ecological systems. Drawing on a series of empirically rich case studies from Australia, China, Europe, and North America, the paper makes a strong case for conducting long term (multi-decadal) investigations based on an array of different types of records, be they instrumental, archival, archaeological, cartographic or administrative. The authors demonstrate the value of combining such records to chart ecological, socio-economic and demographic change in particular places - information which could be fundamental to the developmental of appropriate environmental management strategies therein.
Eric Paglia’s paper draws our attention to debates, past and present, over the respective roles of human and natural agency. By comparing different conceptualisations and representations of human-nature interactions – the ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs with Braudel’s perspectives on human-nature interactions from the mid-20th Century – Paglia reconsiders so-called convergence theories, which focus on an apparent erosion of distinctions between natural and human histories since the 1950s. Paglia, however, questions the definitions of environmental crisis which underpin these convergence narratives and instead endorses an older definition of crisis: crisis as a period of significant ‘reordering’ of humankind’s relationship with the biophysical Earth.
We have two papers which, appearing in the Perspectives and Controversies section of the journal, are intended to foster debate. Daniel Cunha’s provocation provides a critique of Malm and Hornberg’s piece which appeared in The Anthropocene Review Volume 1.1, and in which the authors made a case for the importance of considering ‘intra-species inequality’ and control in Anthropocene narratives. Adopting a Marxist perspective, Cunha challenges Malm and Hornberg’s ‘implied notion of control of biogeochemical cycles by the ruling classes’ and highlights instead the importance of ‘fetishism’, or a lack of social control, as a concept fundamental to the understanding of the Anthropocene.
In our second paper in this section, Alexis Mychajliw, Melissa Kemp, and Elizabeth Hadly invite us to consider the opportunities presented by the Anthropocene in terms of teaching, communication and community engagement. The integrated and complex nature of ‘anthropogenically enhanced problems’, they argue, requires an interdisciplinary approach, of the kind advocated in Dearing et al’s paper perhaps, but this poses a very real challenge in a teaching environment. There may, however, be opportunities for scientists and educators to work across boundaries, and in this paper the authors share one example of a course which localizes and makes ‘tangible the impacts of global change that can be used by any educator’.
Collectively these papers illustrate how the Anthropocene continues to provide a platform for discussion, critique and debate, methodologically, philosophically, conceptually and pedagogically. I look forward to receiving submissions from others who wish to engage with this dialogue.