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Environmental humanities
Get PDFThe term “environmental humanities” was coined early in the new millennium. It describes diverse forms of research, teaching, and public outreach spanning several humanities disciplines, from philosophy and anthropology to history and large parts of human geography. Historically, the humanities have exploredpeople’s distinctly “human” characteristics over and above their shared biological capacities. For most of their twentieth-century history, humanities disciplines tended to bracket environmental issues: like the social sciences, they mostly analyzed human ideas and activities separately from nonhuman things such as climate, water, and forests. The environmental humanities challenge this bracketing, noting that our “humanity” is achieved in relationship with the biophysical world, in both a symbolic-hermeneutic and a material sense.In recent years, the environmental humanities have grown in size. They have also become more institutionalized within and between numerous countries. Additionally, significant and ongoing attempts to make them more visible and influential have occurred. In large part, this is because escalating human impactson the Earth have instilled real urgency among many humanists. They wish to shape the “conversation of humankind” that will, they hope, be sufficiently rich and inclusive to allow humanity to navigate through what is called “the Anthropocene.” According to a number of geoscientists, this is the new planetary epoch humans have inadvertently created. As the epoch unfolds, it could threaten human wellbeing on a very large scale, having already involved massive change to the nonhuman world. This entry offers a comprehensive overview of the environmental humanities. It first defines and traces their evolution since the late 1960s before explaining their recent expansion. It then identifies arguments in favor of the environmental humanities. It goes on to consider recent recommendations made about their future trajectory. It ends with a briefdiscussion of how geographers are shaping this large and complex field of research, teaching, and public outreach. No one discipline dominates work in the environmental humanities, but geographers have been key players for some time and will remain so for the foreseeable futur
The Anthropocene and the environmental humanities: extending the conversation
Get PDF“The Anthropocene� is now a buzzword in international geoscience circles and commanding the attention of various social scientists and humanists. Once a trickle, I review what is now a growing stream of publications about the Holocene’s proclaimed end authored by the latter. I argue that these publications evidence environmental humanists playing two roles in respect of the geoscientific claims they are reacting to: the roles of “inventor-discloser� or “deconstructor-critic�. Despite their importance and their differences, as currently performed these roles hold environmental humanists at a distance from those geoscientists currently trying to popularise the Anthropocene proposition and a set of related grand ideas (like “planetary boundaries�). This is unfortunate because geoscience – like other branches of science – tends to enjoy a higher profile in key decision-making arenas than do humanities subjects. The same can be said of particular social science fields, such as environmental economics. By surveying the wider, febrile geoscience landscape in which the Anthropocene proposition is situated, I reveal opportunities for “engaged-analysis�. This involves simultaneously working on and with geoscientists, so too their kindred spirits in the social sciences. “The Anthropocene’ concept may soon be among the key signifiers that frame the thinking of societal decision-makers. Environmental humanists can, if so minded, shape its meaning and implications directly. But this will involve more practitioners interested in global environmental change operating outside the “usual� arenas, such as established disciplinary conferences and journals. Engaged analysis offers a way to play the inventor-discloser and deconstructor-critic roles in places where knowledge aspires to inform environmental policy and practice. Though challenging and risky, the potential rewards are considerable
Envisioning capitalism: Geography and the renewal of Marxian political economy
No full textThis paper offers a reinterpretation of what critical theorist Moishe Postone calls 'the fundamental core of capitalism'. In so doing, it seeks to lay a set of theoretical foundations for a renewed Marxian political economy in geography, at a time when Marxism has been eclipsed as a leading critical paradigm within the discipline. The argument works on two fronts simultaneously. On the one hand, the ongoing hegemony of economic and political neo-conservatism is occluding the violent realities of a capitalist world economy behind the anodyne logics of free-market theory. These realities suggest the continued relevance of, and need for, a strong Marxian critique of political economy. But on the other hand, Marxism has been reprimanded by its erstwhile allies on the Left of geography for being too 'modern' and too capital- and class-centred. In light of this double challenge, the paper seeks to develop a 'both/and' Marxism for geography that can chart a third way between the antinomies of modern and after-modern modes of theorizing capitalism and class. A project of 'envisioning capitalism' is suggested on this basis, which combines the 'power' of modern theory with the epistemological reflexivity of after-modern theory. At the same time, capitalism and class are rethought at an ontological level and shown still to be essential features of the fin-de-millennium world, but far less closed and hegemonic than is suggested by modern modes of Marxism. Finally, a return to a class politics of redistribution is suggested, but in a way that draws in more recent Left geographical concerns with identity, difference and recognition
Spatial Fixes, Temporal Fixes and Spatio- Temporal Fixes.
No full textIt is especially productive to probe major thinkers on issues central to their work and widely regarded as their strong points. Accordingly, my contribution reviews Harvey�s concern with the spatialities and temporalities ofcapitalism and capitalist social formations. Harvey is famous for stressing the importance of spatiality for an adequate historical materialism. If one phrase symbolizes this, it is surely �spatial fi x�. He has also shown how capitalism rests on a political economy of time and has explored the dynamics of time- space compression in both modern and postmodern societies. More recently, he has introduced the term �spatio- temporal fix� to decipher the dynamics of capitalist imperialism and its grounding in the interaction between capitalist and territorial logics of power. These interests are reflected in his successive but overlapping accounts of three interrelated fixes: spatial, temporal and spatio- temporal. Each works in its own way todefer and/or displace capitalism�s inherent crisis- tendencies but does so only by subsequently intensifying these tendencies and their effects. My chapter affirms Harvey�s key contributions on these themes but also suggests that they have signifi cant ontological, epistemological, methodological and substantive limitations. It also proposes a potentially more productive reading of the spatio- temporal fix that is none the less consistent with and, indeed, inspired by his approach
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