What historical concepts can help us negotiate the implications of the Anthropocene?

Environmental anthropologist Gísli Pálsson unpacks some knotty assumptions that need to be worked out if the international community is to manage a coherent response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. One of these is the problematic notion of human unity — the “we” too often casually assumed — in light of the diversity of geographical, cultural, political and socio-economic differences in human groups and societies around the globe. Another is the notion of science, which he asserts is already losing the capital “S” in response to a growing need to unite disciplines and varieties of knowledge represented by social sciences, literary scholarship, and the humanities in the broadest sense, as well as other communities not part of the academic establishment of specialists. Such refinements in our thinking and assumptions may need to be embraced, he suggests, if we are to come to terms with the new challenges facing humanities and the planet in the Anthropocene.

Environmental anthropologist Gísli Pálsson reflects on the ancient Greek concept of oikos (housekeeping / household economy), from which the modern concepts both of economy and ecology derive, as potentially holding a renewed relevance in the Anthropocene. With human beings searching for solutions to wicked problems in a world in which ‘planetary boundaries’ have become a priority consideration, we may find in this root concept of oikos a new tool in an ancient sheath as we actively rethink and reexplore our bonds to the earth and to each other.

Environmental anthropologist Gísli Pálsson describes the rationale behind the project “Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene,” One of the first major calls to integrate social science and humanities more fully in global changer research. The general acknowledgement from the scientific community that “humans are the key actors in refashioning the planet, in generating the problems we face from global warming, pollution, etc,” argued Pálsson and his co-authors in this 2013 article, makes the necessity of drawing on the expertise of social sciences and humanities (SSH) specialists more obvious and more urgent than ever. This development has potentially far-ranging implications not only for the SSH research communities, but also for science and the global change research agenda more generally.