Panelist: Anders Blok, Associate Professor, Dept of Sociology, Univ of Copenhagen
The Anthropocene event in social theory: Some preliminary reflections
In recent years, the Anthropocene has become something of a clarion call across the natural and social sciences, as well as extending well into the humanities. The energizing impetus of the concept is that it places upon (some parts of) humanity the burden of having radically changed the Earth’s environmental parameters, to the point where several ‘tipping points’ may soon be breached, with incalculable and catastrophic consequences for the future of the planet. Given this dire backdrop, it is no surprise and indeed a welcome event that the Anthropocene should now be the subject of intense debate across the social and human sciences (anthropology included). However, in this presentation, I seek to pause for a second to raise questions about some of the (arguably dominant) forms that such responses seem to take in social theory, writ large. In a word, many responses fly under the banner of the ‘new materialism(s)’. Recounting a bit of intellectual history, as seen from the vantage point of science and technology studies (STS) and actor-network theory (ANT) in particular, I suggest that such responses, rather than offering a forward movement, in fact often instantiates a return either to Marxist categories or to what can be called scientistic social analysis; that is, forms of thinking that takes natural scientific facts as the ground upon which socio-cultural science, theory, and inquiry should be built. In suggesting that we may want to eschew these particular tendencies, the talk ends by discussing how ‘accepting the reality of Gaia’, in the language of Isabelle Stengers, might suggest a more interesting and more productive route ahead.
Panelist: Line Marie Thorsen, PhD Fellow, Department of Anth, Aarhus Univ
Noticing plants: Partial experience and the aesthetics of climate concern in translation
For my PhD I’m looking at how contemporary artists across Europe and East Asia are variously navigating and articulating global climatic issues, into their local environmental concerns. However, starting my research at sites in Hong Kong, Japan, Germany and France, I’ve found that artists and art institutions across these ‘spaces’ articulate their engagements in different ways. Grand concepts, such as climate change or the Anthropocene, has shown to possess limited travelling capacities, while a set of ‘eco-materials’ seems to travel much better. This paper is my attempt to start thinking about and formulating the connections between these sites and practices in terms of eco-materials, de-centering the grand concepts for a moment, in the effort to explore other ways of analysing how global connections of artistic climate engagements may exist, and how these engagements are doing forms of ’imaginative world-making’ in a time of changing climates.
