The Anthropocene lens acts as a “filter”: it emphasizes some elements of the socio-ecological spectrum even as it screens out certain others. But how exactly does the idea of the Anthropocene shape understandings and actions about human‒environmental relations? An awareness of these filters is essential for acting ethically and effectively in response to the challenges confronting us.
The Anthropocene lens acts as a “filter”: it emphasizes some elements of the socio-ecological spectrum even as it screens out certain others. But how exactly does the idea of the Anthropocene shape understandings and actions about human‒environmental relations? An awareness of these filters is essential for acting ethically and effectively in response to the challenges confronting us.
The concept of the Anthropocene is a powerful lens through which to study human relationships with the environment.
However, this lens is not a clear or neutral aid to understanding, but one colored by pre-existing ideas, values, and interests. The process of selective framing is shaped by the politics of knowledge and the hierarchies that inform the constitution of expertise. It affects how issues are understood and acted upon. What ways of thinking and acting does the idea of the Anthropocene endorse and foster? What alternative understandings and actions does it marginalize or exclude? How does it affect different, unequally situated social groups?
The idea of the seminar was to address these questions by examining the implications of the Anthropocene idea in different social settings and biophysical landscapes. The seminar explored how the Anthropocene concept applies to both the small-scale and the large—from the local and the regional to the national and global. It analyzed how class, race, nationality, and gender affect the relative positions assigned to social groups within the Anthropocene frame. The ultimate aim was to equip participants with the tools to think carefully and critically about the concepts and methods of analysis that they deploy.