Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene

This volume presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, geography, political sciences, history, and literary, cultural and media studies. Together, they contribute to current debates on the (re-)imagining of forms of human responsibility that meet the challenges created by humanity entering an age of scalar complexity.

The Anthropocene concept draws attention to the various forms of entanglement of social, political, ecological, biological and geological processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The ensuing complexity and ambiguity create manifold challenges to widely established theories, methodologies, epistemologies and ontologies. The contributions to this volume engage with conceptual issues of scale in the Anthropocene with a focus on mediated representation and narrative. They are centered around the themes of scale and time, scale and the nonhuman and scale and space. The volume presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, geography, political sciences, history and literary, cultural and media studies. Together, they contribute to current debates on the (re-)imagining of forms of human responsibility that meet the challenges created by humanity entering an age of scalar complexity.

Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003136989

Autorentext

Gabriele Dürbeck is Professor of Literature and Culture Studies at the University of Vechta

Philip Hüpkes is research assistant at the Institute for Media and Cultural Studies at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf.

Inhalt

0 The Anthropocene as an Age of Scalar Complexity: Introduction

Gabriele Dürbeck (University of Vechta) / Philip Hüpkes (Heinrich-Heine University)

Section I: Scale and Time

1 Geomedia and Michael Madsen's Into Eternity

Derek Woods (University of British Columbia)

2 Time Travel as a Tool for Promoting Trans-Scalar Thinking

Axel Goodbody (University of Bath)

3 Time Depth: Jean Epstein, Michel Serres, and Operational Model Time

Christoph Rosol (Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)

Section II: Scale and the Nonhuman

4 Planetary Multiplicity, Earthly Multitudes: Interscalar Practices for a Volatile Planet

Nigel Clark (Lancaster University) / Bronislaw Szerszynski (Lancaster University)

5 Plant Scale and the Anthropocene

Heather Sullivan (Trinity University, San Antonio, TX)

6 Anthropomorphism and Alterity

Bernhard Malkmus (University of Newcastle)

7 "We Have Lost Yardsticks by Which to Measure": Arendtian Ethics and the Narration of Scale in the Anthropocene

Adeline Johns-Putra (University of Surrey)

8 Sound and Silence: Punk and the Anthropocene

John Parham (University of Worcester)

Section III: Scale and Space

9 On Being the Right Size: Scale, Democracy and the Anthropocene

Aysem Mert (Stockholm University) and Dougald Hine (Plurality University Network)

10 Cosmos vs. Anthropocene: Multi-Scalar Praxis for Socio-Environmental Justice with Adrienne Maree Brown's Emergent Strategy (2017)

Kathrin Bartha (Goethe University, Frankfurt/Monash University, Melbourne)

11 Google-Gaia. Feedback Loops for Action with Global Forest Watch

Lynda Olman and Birgit Schneider (Potsdam University)

12 J Henry Fair: Art, Irony, and Scaling the Anthropocene (photo-artist/environmental activist J Henry Fair, New York City/Berlin, in Conversation with Gabriele Dürbeck and Philip Hüpkes)

13 Afterword: On Scale and Deep History in the Anthropocene

Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)