Changing the Anthropo(s)cene: Geographers, global environmental change and the politics of knowledge

Abstract

This article explores the relationships between geographers and the ‘Anthroposcene’. The latter comprises the networks, institutions and publications devoted to comprehending and responding to a fast-changing Earth departing from Holocene boundary conditions. The Anthroposcene necessarily mediates peoples’ understanding of what are said to be epochal alterations to our planetary home. It is currently dominated by geoscientists and certain environmental social scientists. Some geographers are among their number. Whilst these researchers are working hard to alert decision-makers and publics to the epic scale, scope and magnitude of ‘the human impact’, their work currently tends to screen out the insights of both critical social science and the environmental humanities. Both forms of inquiry are strongly represented in contemporary Anglophone Geography and have been central to human geography’s ‘environmental turn’ this last 20 years. The article suggests reasons why many geographers who are not currently part of the Anthroposcene might want to get their voices heard therein and thereby change the ‘scene’. Global change research (and politics) is entering a formative moment, and it’s important that a range of epistemic communities shape its content and tenor looking ahead. The stakes are high and place responsibilities on a wide range of environmental researchers and educators.