Editorial

Abstract

‘Winter is coming!’ The ominous phrase punctuating George R.R. Martin’s popular fantasy saga plays as a repetitive warning that there is something out there threatening the world as it is, something the political powers of the time are oblivious to, made shortsighted as they are by their petty quarrels and thirst for power. As much as the warning resounds with contemporaneous anxieties, the underlying message remains anthropo-centred and anchored in warfare concerns – dead people from old wars are coming back lest we constantly keep them at bay. It is tempting to reverse the claim into ‘summer is coming’ to make the point about the actual threat which needs to be addressed by the same shortsighted political powers. It has become common sense that human-induced climate change is a new actor in/of history. Indeed, history has been epistemologically redefined after the popularisation of the Anthropocene in the 1990s to develop into ‘big histories’ that feed global imaginaries about numerous new agentivities (earth, life, nature and also water and ice). History will never be the same, nor the figure of the human. The wintery summer that is upon us warrants our attention. Anthropology has a lot to offer, we believe, precisely by thinking laterally and including agents, forces and materialities that we simply can’t afford to ignore.