In a forthcoming piece (available in advance here (pdf)) for the new journal The Anthropocene Review, Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg pose an interesting and important challenge to some prevailing discourses of the Anthropocene.
Among the excellent contributions in the piece:
Realising that climate change is ‘anthropogenic’ is really to appreciate that it is sociogenic. It has arisen as a result of temporally fluid social relations as they materialise through the rest of nature, and once this ontological insight – implicit in the science of climate change – is truly taken onboard, one can no longer treat humankind as merely a species-being determined by its biological evolution. Nor can one write off divisions between human beings as immaterial to the broader picture, for such divisions have been an integral part of fossil fuel combustion in the first place.
Image credit: Banksy
Malm and Hornborg: “The Geology of Mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative. @AnthropoceneRev http://t.co/joyPYOi0Op