This open access collection is a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and contributions of cultural history to contemporary and cross-disciplinary discussions of the Anthropocene.
Organised into three key sections, this volume is a concise and critical overview of interdisciplinary research on the cultural history of the Anthropocene. The first part introduces readers to the key conceptual and theoretical challenges of Anthropocene debates, before the second part analyses a variety of case studies, to highlight how ethnography and cultural history can make certain processes visible and historically tangible. Key case studies explored by the volume range from sustainability in poultry production, to 18th century mining, to natural history and the works of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen. Finally, the third section explores 5 critical approaches to Anthropocene discourse, and the challenges it may pose to alternative styles of cultural history.
Overall, this volume offers a synthesis of conceptual, historical, and critical approaches, that when combined provide a detailed overview of the latest research surrounding the cultural history of the Anthropocene.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the University of Bergen.
Introduction: Writing Cultural Histories of the Anthropocene, Anders Ekström (Uppsala University, Sweden), Marit Ruge Bjærke (University of Bergen, Norway), Brita Brenna and John Ødemark (both Oslo University, Norway)
Part I: Concepts
1. Rituals, Environments, and More-than-Human Relations, Aike P. Rots (University of Oslo, Norway)
2. Scaling from Below: How Cultural History Makes (a) Difference, Anders Ekström (Uppsala University, Sweden)
3. Golden Spikes and Other Materialities of the Anthropocene, Brita Brenna (University of Oslo, Norway)
4. Narrative Cultures in the Anthropocene: Storyworlds and the Predictive Mind, Dirk Johannsen (University of Oslo, Norway)
5. Periodizing Culture: Timescales and Intervals in Cultural History, Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo, Norway)
6. In the Wake: Some Notes on Fieldwork in the Anthropocene, Hugo Reinert (University of Oslo, Norway)
7. Bounding – Towards an Economic Philosophy of the Anthropocene, Sverker Sörlin (KTH Environmental Humanities Lab, Stockholm) and Eric Paglia (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Part II: Case Studies
8. This Thing We Call the Future: The Material Consequences of the Imagination, Bergsveinn Þórsson (Bifröst University, Iceland), Merve Tabur (Utrecht University, Netherlands) and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay (University of Oslo, Norway)
9. Carrying Capacity? Anthropocene Poultry in Ethnographic Light, Frida Hastrup, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
10. Control: Attempting to Tame the World, Gro Ween (University of Oslo, Norway)
11. Narrating the Natural World, Line Esborg (University of Oslo, Norway)
12. “Enlightened Anthropocentrism” in Early Nineteenth-Century Geology: Henrik Steffens and Leopold von Buch, Marie-Theres Federhofer (University of Tromsø, Norway)
13. Heading for Venus? Scientific Examples and the Anthropocene, Marit Ruge Bjærke (University of Bergen, Norway)
14. Giacomo Leopardi in the Anthropocene: Translating the Other from Nature to AI, Marta Arnaldi (University of Oxford, UK and University of Oslo, Norway)
15. Another Place, Another Time. Revisiting Goethe’s Classic Walpurgis Night in Light of the Anthropocene, Siv Frøydis Berg (National Library of Norway, Norway)
Part III: Critique
16. From Worlding the Earth to Earthing the World: The Anthropocene as a New Metaphysics?, Clemet Askheim and Trine K. Haagensen (both Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway)
17. Talking About What Anthropocene? How Conflicting Conceptualization May Inform Cultural History, Hedda Susanne Molland (University of Bergen, Norway)
18. Multitemporality and Cultural History of Science, Staffan Bergwik (Stockholm University, Sweden)
19. Humanity – and the Styles of Cultural History in the Anthropocene, John Ødemark (University of Oslo, Norway)
20. Waiting for the Noösphere: The Narrative of Crutzen and Stoermer’s ‘The “Anthropocene”’, Åmund Norum Resløkken (University of Oslo, Norway)
Bibliography
Index
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