Anthropocene and

humanities
EXTENDING CONVERSATION NOEL CASTREE
REPORTER: DEMECILLO
Introduction

 Anthropocene- relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the

period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate
and the environment.

 Environmental Humanities was launched in order “to support and further, wide
range of conversations on environmental issues in this time of growing awareness
of the challenges facing all life on Earth.
 “The Anthropocene,” once a little-known neologism coined by two senior
geoscientists (Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer)
 It describes an Earth’s surface, transformed by human activities that the
biophysical conditions of the Holocene epoch.
 (The Holocene is the name given to the last 11,700 years* of the Earth's
history — the time since the end of the last major glacial epoch, or "ice
age.“)
.

 .
 The Anthropocene” was scientific neologism in 2000 but is now something of a
buzzword in the earth and environmental sciences
 describe human impacts on the face of the Earth that are wider and deeper than
previously recognized. Both also have an epochal meaning, suggesting as they do the
end of the Holocene epoch (the period of Earth history during which Homo
sapiens have flourished). This entry details the origins of the Anthropocene concept,
and its collateral term, planetary boundaries. It then discusses antecedent concepts that
failed to catch on in the world of science or the wider world. Contemporary attempts to
formally designate the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch are then considered. 
 The entry considers how social scientists and humanities scholars are responding
to the claim that humanity is leaving its “safe operating space,” concluding with a
discussion of how the broader academic discussions of the Anthropocene are
being registered in geography.
 Though so far fairly marginal to debates about both ideas, geographers have a
clear stake in determining their future significance for science and society.
.  The roles are venerable and worthy ones in humanistic scholarship—I will call
them the “inventor-discloser” and “deconstructor-critic” roles.
 The term “geoscience” to refer to the discipline of geology (earth
science) and the several fields covering environmental science (e.g.
geoarchaeology, geomorphology, marine biology, biogeography, and
climatology).
 Humanists' reactions to “the Anthropocene.”. This offer a brief chronology of this
recent interest, before saying more about the particular forms it has taken. The
Chakrabarty and Crist essays referred to above offered very different takes on
what “the Anthropocene” could mean for humanists. Chakrabarty “assumed the
science to be right in its broad outlines” and proceeded to argue that history—his
own field of professional endeavor would experience irrevocable change if the
“environmental crisis” were to be fully acknowledged by practitioners.
 By contrast, Crist, though sharing Chakrabarty's belief that planetary life is under
threat “against the Anthropocene.” 
 “The linguistic ushering in of the Anthropocene conceptually hardens modern
humanity's perceived entitlements, thereby reinforcing how humans act within the
biosphere.
.
Contextualising Scientific Discourse
about the Anthropocene
 These studies are precisely those that non-scientists writing about the
Anthropocene have tended to rely upon in their own publications. At one level
this reliance is entirely appropriate.
 This is unfortunate because understanding this context reveals why engaged
analysis is especially necessary and possible today.
 These criticisms are worth considering—though I obviously regard the first as too
pessimistic, yet worry that the second might wrongly lead us to believe there is
more depth-and-breadth to current humanities-geoscience engagement than in my
view there is. Regardless, what both criticisms imply is that greater engaged
analysis of and with geoscience is either too challenging or else easy enough to
further foster.
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 Question. 10pts

 What are your understanding about Anthropocene and humanities extending

conversation in noel castree?