Munro Lecture: What scale is the Anthropocene? by Prof Anna L. Tsing
Too often, we accept the “planetary” nature of climate change, the extinction crisis, and other elements of the Anthropocene as settled; we imagine the role of anthropologists as checking out local interpretations and effects of these planetary phenomena. Yet take a page from the ontological turn: what if local situations are constitutively different? This talk argues that the Anthropocene is patchy and particular as well as planetary, and that the job of anthropologists is to better describe those patches, at multiple scales. Analysis of patches shows us social formations and ecologies that may disrupt our sense of the whole; patches matter in how we address environmental catastrophe. Using the project Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene, this talk explores how to work across spatial, temporal, and positional differences in the formation of Anthropocene patches.
Time: 17:00 BST
