Age Of Anthropocene Research Articles

The Uncanny Future of the Anthropocene

This essay will go over the basic notions of the uncanny while addressing the distance and the alienation of subject from the very concept of time in the imagination of the future in the age of Anthropocene. In fact, the two trajectories of time, namely past and future, overlap as the uncanny reflection of each other. It is by paying attention to the phenomenon and the consequence of the melting of glacier of the Alps that this essay attempts to remap the basic concepts of time, which consists of two kinds of engagements to historicization, namely remembering and anticipating. This essay argues that our failure to imagine the future is connected to the repressed memory of the colonial experience. In other words, the unveiling of the mountain as a result of global warming shows that our historical time is moving towards its own end, demanding us to address the issues that are repressed in our culture that allows all kinds of extractions. The time of Anthropocene is now bridging the gap between the location of death and the location of life with the force that can be best addressed as the uncanny return of the repressed voice.

Towards an eco-practical theology: An eschatological horizon of true hope

The ecological crisis in the world necessitates the reconfiguration of the hegemony of modern science, theology, politics, economics and technology – the root cause of a pending ecological catastrophe. The aim is to redress a growing culture of apathy in the context of devastating weather conditions, social and political discord, and unrelenting violent wars. Public theology serves as a conceptual framework with transversal rationality as an interlocutor between the different theological (systematic, ethics, pastoral care and eco-theology), religious and philosophical perspectives. The theological ontology of care is presented followed by the role of communities of critical prophetic discourse. The notion of earth as a community leads to the prospect of a new eco-theology. Finally, the pending ecological catastrophe is reconceptualised in and through Christian eschatology. This is an inter- and intra-disciplinary discussion on the disastrous consequences of modernity and anthropocentric behaviour in terms of the current environmental crisis. Various scholars offer valuable insights into what the problem is, who responsible is for the environmental crisis, and how Christian communities should forge an accountability of care for the earth and vulnerable human beings. The eschatological reality of God’s preferred future remains a constant of hopeful and sustainable life in the Anthropocene age. It is recommended that we change the way we exist by transforming modernity as developed and sustained through theology, socio-political, economic and technological ‘advances’.Contribution: This article focussed on the ecological crisis because of anthropocentrism and distorted theological, political and socio-economic paradigms to serve human interests despite the consequences for the earth. We need to reconfigure interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary scientific approaches to embrace earth as a key scientific interlocutor. The ecological crisis should be conceptualised within the reality of Christian eschatology – Jesus Christ is ultimately, the eschaton.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME EVENTS: EXPLORING THE INTERFACE

This review paper delves into "Resilience to Climate Crisis in the Anthropocene" within the broader context of "Climate Change: Conflict and Resilience in the Age of Anthropocene." It highlights that the issues resulting from climate change are both environmental and societal, intricately woven into the fabric of communities. Emphasizing the proactive cultivation of community resilience as essential for sustainable development, the chapter aims to deliver an in-depth understanding of this dynamic. The significance of this chapter lies in its holistic approach to how communities, as frontline responders, can develop resilience strategies to mitigate vulnerabilities and enhance adaptive capacities. By elucidating the interplay between climate change and community resilience, it seeks to empower policymakers, practitioners, and researchers with interdisciplinary insights. The methodology involves a comprehensive literature review that explores the interrelationship of climate change and community resilience. The paper aims to offer actionable insights and practical implications for policy formulation, governance, and community-based adaptation strategies, thereby serving as a roadmap for stakeholders. It aspires to guide informed decision-making and inspire collaborative efforts to cultivate resilient communities that pave the way for sustainable development in the Anthropocene.

The War of the Worlds: Reading the Fragile Existence of Humans in the Age of Anthropocene

H.G. Wells’ science fiction The War of the Worlds (1898) in its imagined reality connects the isolated human existence with the universe and the unknown that exists beyond human understanding. The anticipation of the possibility of extraterrestrial life beyond human existence gave way to the understanding that humans on earth are not superior. Wells’ being influenced by the ideas of evolution propagated by Charles Darwin drew a conflict between organic beings with and beyond life on earth and its ecosystems. If looked through an ecocritical perspective, Well’s work can be seen as containing a greater sense of destruction and fragility of life on earth beyond human existence. The novel has inspired several other works and has been adapted into various films. While many interpretations of the text have revolved around social and political conflicts, a latest adaptation, an ongoing television series War of the Worlds (first aired in 2019) narrates concerns relevant to the age of the Anthropocene. One of the major changes is the aliens depicted in the series. The series re-imagines the weird Martians as aliens who are found to be a race of humans from the future. This paper will explore how the new adaptation draws from the original novel, but changing the aliens gives way to address the issues that are lurking in this age. With the arrival of the alien race on the Earth, the TV series shows an awareness of human beings as planetary forces through the struggle for survival between the two races of human life. The TV series brings about a dialogue relevant to the current time about who we are as humans, the fragility of human existence, and how humans are consciously transforming the planet we live in and its environment.

Beyond Boundaries: A Feminist Critique of Oppression in the Age of Anthropocene

Beyond Boundaries: A Feminist Critique of Oppression in the Age of Anthropocene

The Human, Non-human Affective Entanglements: A Posthuman Perspective of an ESOL Classroom

In the age of Anthropocene, we problematize the multitudes of affordances of humanism that we are ultimately entwined by and within. Education is a discipline that always placed predominance to the human centredness ignoring several non-human and non-living objects that also form a part of teaching and learning. However, the humanistic notions of hierarchies have undergone radical changes. The locus in a classroom is no longer regulated by teachers and in a multicultural, multilingual classroom, the interaction between teacher, learners, materials and methods are evolving continually redefining the power relations. This essay highlights how every assemblage (an assemblage being a random clubbing of several human and non-human elements) is unique and in a state of flux to act and react with various human and non-human elements within/outside classroom territories. Designed as an autoethnographic study, by analysing the major tenets of posthumanism and by connecting them with English language education, this article argues for a posthuman turn in English language teaching and learning by examining the research diary entries of the author to identify how the entanglement of affect, rhizome and assemblage results in deterritorialization. Episodes and anecdotes from an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teaching context in England serve as primary data. This autoethnographic study reveals the agential assemblages in the classrooms which problematize the singular agency of the teacher as the reservoir of knowledge and discusses how the power structure in the classroom is altered when learners and their affective assemblages influence the teacher and the very practice of teaching.

The Anthropocene Age Reveals the Insanity at the Heart of Western Christian Religious Experience

The Anthropocene Age Reveals the Insanity at the Heart of Western Christian Religious Experience

Locating Empire and Capitalism in Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain: A Fable for Our Times

Amitav Ghosh entitles the opening section of his nonfiction on climate change The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2017) as “Stories.” Here, Ghosh highlights the significance of stories and storytelling practices in re-imagining our age of global warming and climate change. He displays how stories function as stimuli for the resurgence of our imaginative power to re-cognize the “unthinkable”, the non-human world and the intricate relations between humans, nonhumans and the natural environment. Drawing upon the insightful studies of the ecological aesthetics of stories and storytelling in the age of Anthropocene, the paper discusses how environmental storytelling as part of indigenous orality is reinvented by Ghosh in his latest fiction The Living Mountain: A Fable for Our Times (2022) which tends to look at the Anthropocene through the prism of empire and capitalism.

Complementary Ecologies of Being: Quakerism and Buddhism as Exemplars of a Planetist Analogical Imagination

In the face of burgeoning environmental crises in the Anthropocene Age, this paper explores ecological perspectives within Buddhism and Quakerism. These two religious traditions reflect a planetist ethic by emphasizing environmental stewardship in both their canonical writings and their religious structures and practices. Conceptually, this paper contrasts these traditions to the “economism” ethic developed by John Cobb. Through tenets that include simplicity, reverence for nature, and honoring the interconnectedness of life, Buddhism and Quakerism promote environmentally conscious behavior. Across these religious traditions, that compassion and healing can be a path forward in the face of ego-based environmental consumption. In exploring these two religious traditions that have more developed ecological threads, this paper considers sustainable environmental ethics in the Anthropocene Age.

Wilderness Ethics in the Anthropocene

Abstract The concept of wilderness has been deconstructed with the arrival of the age of Anthropocene, so the wilderness ethics of the Anthropocene was once ignored. But in fact, what has been deconstructed is only the “natural” wilderness as pure nature, not the “untrammeled” wilderness. In addition, the environmental system corresponding to the traditional wilderness concept still exists, and is still the closest to the original natural environmental system. There is a debate on how to treat this environmental system in the age of Anthropocene, so it is necessary to clarify the concept of wilderness in the Anthropocene and rebuild the wilderness ethics. The wilderness ethics of Anthropocene is a responsive one, which calls for both sides to interact and blend without denying the autonomy of both sides: On the one hand, we should establish a holistic view of harmonious coexistence between man and the wilderness, basing on the ideological basis provided by the Anthropocene to break the binary opposition between culture and nature. The view does not include a sacred order. On the other hand, we should affirm the autonomy and uncertainty of the “untrammeled” wilderness. The wilderness ethics of the Anthropocene enlightens us that we should regulate the intervention of human and technology in a certain range when protecting the wilderness, respect “locality” and derive ecological wisdom from indigenous peoples.

Polluted Leisure Enskilment: Skateboarding as Ecosophy

Pollution makes some leisure activities not only possible but pleasurable, an analysis known as “polluted leisure.” In this paper, I extend this analysis with case examples of leisure participants adept use of polluted spaces. This adept use suggests that some leisure participants are “enskiled” at polluted leisure, possessing an embodied ecological familiarity with polluted spaces similar to a sailor who has a real knack for getting their sea legs. I present a case example of skateboarders building formal and informal skateparks on remediated Superfund sites and brownfields to further encourage this notion of polluted leisure enskilment. I then develop this notion of polluted leisure enskilment using Guattari’s “ecosophy,” a way of being most suitable for our Anthropocene age, claiming that skateboarding’s esthetic enmeshed in polluted space offers a lived ecosophy. I conclude with potential extensions of this research in leisure studies, spatial justice, and skate studies.

Comparing and contrasting approaches to education for transition and transformation

ABSTRACT A comparative analysis of two approaches to education in two academic literatures in two languages is the basis for discussion of how education systems should respond to contemporary transitions in the world in an Anthropocene age. The first approach is based on francophone literature and argues for an ‘individual pedagogical education’ in contrast to the ‘social normative education’ which dominates mainstream education in France. The second anglophone approach focuses on how education can – and in experimentation has already – prepare learners for social action as denizens of their community even before they are formally citizens, with voting and similar rights. The combination of the two approaches suggests that current global transitions demand responses which involve substantial transformations in learners and that education systems must accept this responsibility.

Anthropocentrism and Environmental Apocalypse in Svetlana Alexievich’s Narrative

Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: An Oral History of Nuclear Disaster (1997) presents how the age of anthropocene is driving the earth towards an imminent peril. In this era, humans acknowledge they are capable of the technological fix, repair and enhancement of natural systems. For instance, the Chernobyl explosion which occurred in 1986 is a consequence of human centered and technocratic worldview. Its aftermath such as a series of apocalyptic events have appeared in the narrative one after the other, and each existence of this biotic community is deadly threatened. Hence, this paper argues that this oral narrative of Alexievich admonishes the humans of this present era to prevent the future catastrophes by unmasking the perilous consequences of the Chernobyl explosion based on the voices of its survivors. To address the issues raised in the paper, the relevant insights of Lawrence Buell, Lynn White, Val Plumwood and Vandana Shiva are taken as a theoretical framework to analyze how and why humans are wrecking nature, and summoning the end times. Finally, this paper concludes that human beings must learn lessons from past deeds and respect nature as a whole entity in order to save the planet.

The Task of Envisioning Security for the Anthropocene

Our Anthropocene age is defined by a wide array of anthropogenic pressures on planet Earth, which have produced multiple human and environmental insecurities. From climate change to population displacements, from ecosystem degradation to global pandemics, we are faced with unprecedented human and environmental emergencies. Safeguarding the future hinges on generating a wider understanding of ‘security’ that sees the need for holistic strategy, global solidarity and multilateral cooperation. We need a security imaginary transformed by critical and responsible thinking on economic production and planetary precarity, and we require such a vision to manifest in new governmentalities that set us on the right path towards a shared future. This paper reflects on the challenge of establishing holistic understandings of security which can be drawn upon more effectively to respond to the intersecting crises unfolding on the planet. In seeking to reframe global security strategy, the paper underscores an interlinked sense of human-environmental security which extends the UN’s human security concept to address the overlapping precarities of our human and non-human worlds. It considers in particular the role of legal and regulatory mechanisms in curbing the ecological excesses of late modern capitalism; and in seeking to transcend narrow statist formulations of security, the paper illuminates our global interconnections, which require us to renew and support networks of international solidarity and multilateral cooperation.

The problems of, and remedy for, hope in the Anthropocene Age: a psychoanalytic–political perspective

The Anthropocene Age exposes a fundamental problem and contradiction of Western political philosophies, which is the production of an ontological rift between human beings and other species that undermines care and hope. This rift becomes especially evident when we become aware of the devastating effects of climate change. To further understand this rift, I rely on what I call a psychoanalytic–political hermeneutical framework that identifies the conscious and unconscious aspects of agency, motivation, and illusion as they emerge from and exist within public–political spaces of speaking and acting together that maintain the ontological rift and its distortions of care and hope. I turn to a psychoanalytic developmental perspective of the relation between care and hope, which points to a remedy vis-à-vis the ontological rift.

Assessing Vulnerability of Regional-Scale Aquifer-Aquitard Systems in East Gulf Coastal Plain of Alabama by Developing Groundwater Flow and Transport Models

Groundwater vulnerability assessment helps subsurface water resources management by providing scientific information for decision-makers. Rigorous, quantitative assessment of groundwater vulnerability usually requires process-based approaches such as groundwater flow and transport modeling, which have seldom been used for large aquifer-aquitard systems due to limited data and high model uncertainty. To quantify the vulnerability of regional-scale aquifer-aquitard systems in the East Gulf Coastal Plain of Alabama, a three-dimensional (3D) steady-state groundwater flow model was developed using MODFLOW, after applying detailed hydrogeologic information to characterize seven main aquifers bounded by aquitards. The velocity field calibrated by observed groundwater heads was then applied to calculate groundwater age and residence time for this 3D aquifer-aquitard system via backward/forward particle tracking. Radioactive isotope data (14C and 36Cl) were used to calibrate the backward particle tracking model. Results showed that shallow groundwater (<300 ft below the groundwater table) in southern Alabama is mainly the Anthropocene age (25–75 years) and hence susceptible to surface contamination, while the deep aquifer-aquitard systems (700 ft or deeper below the groundwater table) contain “fossil” waters and may be safe from modern contamination if there is no artificial recharge/discharge. Variable horizontal and vertical vulnerability maps for southern Alabama aquifer-aquitard systems reflect hydrologic conditions and intermediate-scale aquifer-aquitard architectures in the regional-scale models. These large-scale flow/transport models with coarse resolutions reasonably characterize the broad distribution and vertical fluctuation of groundwater ages, probably due to aquifer-aquitard structures being captured reliably in the geology model. Parameter sensitivity analysis, vadose zone percolation time, wavelet analysis, and a preliminary extension to transient flow were also discussed to support the aquifer vulnerability assessment indexed by groundwater ages for southern Alabama.

The Silence of Othered Species: The Anthropocene Age, Trauma, and the Ontological Rift

The Silence of Othered Species: The Anthropocene Age, Trauma, and the Ontological Rift

Waging the green war: initial steps towards eco-practical theology and eco-pastoral care in the African context

ABSTRACT This article is an exploratory contemplation of practical theological and pastoral engagement in the so-called green war in the African context. It first provides an overview of eco-theology, the Anthropocene age, biodiversity, eco-practical theology, and eco-pastoral care to create a theoretical framework for the research. As it is aimed at the African context, the notion of the African Anthropocene is put forward in the second section. Considering the African Anthropocene and subsequent biodiversity challenges, an eco-practical theology and eco-pastoral care are imagined in the third and fourth sections. Ecological preaching, liturgy, and youth work are discussed as avenues for eco-pastoral care contributing to the multidisciplinary biodiversity conservation discourse and its vision of a sustainable globe.

A Radical Jesus and the Inoperativity of Salvation and Sin: Pastoral Theological Implications

ABSTRACT This paper argues that apparatuses associated with sovereignty and the ontological rift give rise to psychosocial experiences of alienation. These experiences are ontologized by way of the notion of sin, and the ‘remedy’ for these experiences is the notion of salvation. The theological remedy functions to leave the real sources of alienation unquestioned and hidden, namely, apparatuses associated with sovereignty and the ontological rift. A radical Jesus, I argue, renders these apparatuses inoperative, creating the possibility of anarchic relations free of both sovereignty and the ontological rift. All of this, I argue, has implications for pastoral theology/care in the Anthropocene Age.

The Corona Pandemic and the Dilemma of Developed Countries: The Age of Anthropocene

The Corona Pandemic and the Dilemma of Developed Countries: The Age of Anthropocene