The Anthropocene

About this book

This book is devoted to the Anthropocene, the period of unprecedented human impacts on Earth's environmental systems, and illustrates how Geographers envision the concept of the Anthropocene.

This edited volume illustrates that geographers have a diverse perspective on what the Anthropocene is and represents. The chapters also show that geographers do not feel it necessary to identify only one starting point for the temporal onset of the Anthropocene. Several starting points are suggested, and some authors support the concept of a time-transgressive Anthropocene. Chapters in this book are organized into six sections, but many of them transcend easy categorization and could have fit into two or even three different sections. Geographers embrace the concept of the Anthropocene while defining it and studying it in a variety of ways that clearly show the breadth and diversity of the discipline.

This book will be of great value to scholars, researchers, and students interested in geography, environmental humanities, environmental studies, and anthropology.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Contents

Introduction: The Anthropocene / David R. Butler
Part 1: Definitions and Conceptual Considerations
1. The Anthropocene: The One, the Many, and the Topological / J. Anthony Stallins
2. The Geoethical Semiosis of the Anthropocene: The Peircean Triad for a Reconceptualization of the Relationship between Human Beings and Environment / Francesco De Pascale and Valeria Dattilo
3. Placing the Anthropos in Anthropocene / Jeffrey Hoelle and Nicholas C. Kawa
4. The Inhumanities / Kathryn Yusoff
5. Language and Groundwater: Symbolic Gradients of the Anthropocene / Paul C. Adams
6. Agri-Food Systems and the Anthropocene / Emily Reisman and Madeleine Fairbairn
7. On Decolonizing the Anthropocene: Disobedience via Plural Constitutions / Mark Jackson

Part 2: Historical Perspectives on the Anthropocene
8. Nothing New under the Sun? George Perkins Marsh and Roots of U.S. Physical Geography / Jacob Bendix and Michael A. Urban
9. Synchronizing Earthly Timescales: Ice, Pollen, and the Making of Proto-Anthropocene Knowledge in the North Atlantic Region / Sverker Sörlin and Erik Isberg
10. Geographic Thought and the Anthropocene: What Geographers Have Said and Have to Say / Thomas Barclay Larsen and John Harrington Jr.

Part 3: Physical Geography and the Anthropocene
11. Floodplain and Terrace Legacy Sediment as a Widespread Record of Anthropogenic Geomorphic Change / L. Allan James, Timothy P. Beach and Daniel D. Richter
12. Hotter Drought as a Disturbance at Upper Treeline in the Southern Rocky Mountains / Grant P. Elliott, Sydney N. Bailey and Steven J. Cardinal
13. Onset of the Paleoanthropocene in the Lower Great Lakes Region of North America: An Archaeological and Paleoecological Synthesis / Albert E. Fulton II and Catherine H. Yansa
14. Identifying a Pre-Columbian Anthropocene in California / Anna Klimaszewski-Patterson, Christopher T. Morgan and Scott Mensing
15. Wetland Farming and the Early Anthropocene: Globally Upscaling from the Maya Lowlands with LiDAR and Multiproxy Verification / Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Timothy P. Beach and Nicholas P. Dunning
16. Putting the Anthropocene into Practice: Methodological Implications / Christine Biermann, Lisa C. Kelley and Rebecca Lave

Part 4: Natural Hazards, Disasters, and the Anthropocene
17. The Changing Nature of Hazard and Disaster Risk in the Anthropocene / Susan L. Cutter
18. Seismic Shifts: Recentering Geology and Politics in the Anthropocene / Ben A. Gerlofs
19. Understanding Urban Flood Resilience in the Anthropocene: A Social–Ecological–Technological Systems (SETS) Learning Framework / Heejun Chang, David J. Yu, Samuel A. Markolf, Chang-yu Hong, Sunyong Eom, Wonsuh Song and Deghyo Bae

Part 5: The Environment and Environmental Degradation
20. Reframing Pre-European Amazonia through an Anthropocene Lens / Antoinette M. G. A WinklerPrins and Carolina Levis
21. Forests in the Anthropocene / Jaclyn Guz and Dominik Kulakowski
22. Abandoning Holocene Dreams: Proactive Biodiversity Conservation in a Changing World / Kenneth R. Young and Sisimac Duchicela
23. Re-envisioning the Toxic Sublime: National Park Wilderness Landscapes at the Anthropocene / Nicolas T. Bergmann and Robert M. Briwa
24. Climate Necropolitics: Ecological Civilization and the Distributive Geographies of Extractive Violence in the Anthropocene / Meredith J. DeBoom
25. Cultures and Concepts of Ice: Listening for Other Narratives in the Anthropocene / Harlan Morehouse and Marisa Cigliano
26. Ruins of the Anthropocene: The Aesthetics of Arctic Climate Change / Mia M. Bennett
27. The New (Ab)Normal: Outliers, Everyday Exceptionality, and the Politics of Data Management in the Anthropocene / Katherine R. Clifford and William R. Travis

Part 6: The Anthropocene and Geographic Education
28. What Does That Have to Do with Geology? The Anthropocene in School Geographies around the World / Péter Bagoly-Simó
29. Geographic Education in the Anthropocene: Cultivating Citizens at the Neoliberal University / Lindsay Naylor and Dana Veron

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Biography

David R. Butler is Texas State University System Regents’ Professor Emeritus, and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography, Texas State University. His research interests include geomorphology in the Anthropocene, zoogeomorphology, dendrogeomorphology, and mountain environments and environmental change, especially in the Rocky Mountains.