Hello Anthropocene! Goodbye Environmental History?
Pluralizing the Anthropocene II
Pluralizing the Anthropocene II
Schedule: 2 pm (UTC + 1, Lisbon Time)
The session will be in English
Events
will take place online. All welcome but registration required
Rohan D’SOUZA (Kyoto University)
Moderator: Gonçalo Santos (CIAS / Sci-Tech Asia / University of
Coimbra)
The
human in the Anthropocene is a geological force. Put differently, in the
epoch
of the Anthropocene the human is folded into Nature: possessing now a planetary
scale impact equivalent to a massive meteorite, super volcanoes or huge
tectonic shifts. That is, through unchecked carbon emissions leading to
catastrophic global warming, we, as a species, are potentially poised to effect
a sixth planetary extinction. Environmental history, on the other hand, presumed
a biological human, who was constantly abrading against geography and
ecological limits. Environmental history, however, interpreted and informed
human agency and will. It carried lessons for sustainability and assembled
ideologies for hope. In contrast, Nature is blind and if the human in the Anthropocene
merges with geological time, who or what possesses the agency to save planetary
life?
Related
Gonçalo D. SANTOS is an anthropologist and a leading international
scholar in the field of China studies. His research explores new approaches to
questions of modernity, subjectivity, and social, technological, and ecological
transformation in contemporary China. He is an assistant professor of
socio-cultural anthropology in the Department of Life Sciences and a Researcher
and Group Coordinator in the Research Center for Anthropology and Health (CIAS) at the
University of Coimbra. Prior to joining the University of Coimbra in 2020, he
held positions at the London School of Economics, the Max Planck Institute for
Social Anthropology, and the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Chinese Village
Life Today (University of
Washington Press, 2021) and the co-editor of Transforming
Patriarchy (University of Washington Press, 2017). His research
has been published in leading scientific journals in the fields of
anthropology, science and technology studies, and Asian studies. He is a member
of the Research Group on
Culture and Society, Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues,
at Georgetown University, and is the founder and the director of Sci-Tech Asia, a transnational research
network that focuses on the relations between technoscience, politics, and
society in Asia and around the world. He is interested in comparative
approaches that draw on Chinese and Asian perspectives and histories to
challenge the hegemonic power of Euro-American epistemologies and narratives of
modernity.