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Writing History in the Anthropocene: Scaling, Accountability, and Accumulation

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Writing History in the Anthropocene: Scaling, Accountability, and Accumulation Research Collection Journal Article Writing History in the Anthropocene: Scaling, Accountability, and Accumulation Author(s): Westermann, Andrea; Höhler, Sabine Publication Date: 2020-12 Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000486868 Originally published in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 46(4), http://doi.org/10.13109/gege.2020.46.4.579 Rights / License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use. ETH Library Writing History in the Anthropocene Scaling, Accountability, and Accumulation by Andrea Westermann and Sabine Höhler* We introduce three topics that characterize research in and of the Anthropocene: ter- restrial scales (temporal, systemic, and spatial); accountability within and beyond the social, cultural, and political realms of human interaction; and the unprecedented accumulation and redistribution of earth matter. Historians are well equipped to both explain social change and expose the historicity of concepts, institutions, individual or collective routines, and experiences. Considering this double interest, along with the methodological renewals of their discipline, historians are able to historicize the ter- restrial environment and expose geological and ecological causalities across all scales without losing sight of human dimensions and responsibilities. Since the turn of the new millennium, earth scientists from various disciplines have invited their colleagues, other scientists and humanists, politicians, NGOs, as well as the public at large, to consider consigning the contemporary geological epoch of the Holocene to the past, by superimposing a new time interval, the Anthropocene.1 When discussing this new geological epoch, scholars highlight that past and present societal actions in the aggregate have become a powerful force, shaping and changing the earth system and thus earth history at its planetary or terrestrial scales of space and time, equal, for instance, to the For personal use only. climate-driving forces already at work.2 By comparing these societal actions * Sabine Hçhler’s contribution has received funding from Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, project “Life on Mars. The Science and Fiction of Terraforming and the Future of Planet Earth” (P17– 0867:1), and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 787516 “The Rise of Global Environmental Governance. A History of the Contemporary Human-Earth Relationship”). 1 See Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, The “Anthropocene,” in: IGBP Global Change Newsletter 2000, no. 41, p. 17; Will Steffen et al., Global Change and the Earth System. A Planet under Pressure, Berlin 2005. For an analysis of the diverse epistemic logics and preferences of climate scientists, biochemists, paleontologists, and geologists, see Geschichte und Gesellschaft downloaded from www.vr-elibrary.de by Andrea Westermann on February, 9 2021 Sbastien Dutreuil, L’Anthropocne est-il un concept d’histoire de la Terre? Le nom qui ne dit pas son pistmologie, in: Rmi Beau and Catherine Larrre (eds.), Penser l’Anthropocne, Paris 2018, pp. 355–371. 2 Climate-driving forces are: the variations of the earth’s orbit around the sun (the Milankovitch cycle), tectonic shifts in the distribution of oceans and land masses (ocean currents and a landscape’s geographical and topographical features co-determine regional climate patterns), super volcanoes (with severe cooling effects induced by the aerosols blown into the global atmosphere during an eruption), and the earth’s surface absorption or reflection of sunlight (the albedo effect). Geschichte und Gesellschaft 46. 2020, S. 579 – 605 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Gçttingen 2020 [2021] ISSN (Printausgabe): 0340-613X, ISSN (online): 2196-9000 580 Andrea Westermann and Sabine Hçhler with earthly forces, scholars demonstrate the profound and irreversible impacts of societies on their environments: from agriculture and industrialization, carbon dioxide accumulations in the atmosphere, and the rapid, large-scale melting of ice sheets and glaciers, to the circulation of synthetic materials, radioactive contamination of soil, and a shrinking biodiversity. Whatever the Anthropocene’s stratigraphically most appropriate marker and hence actual starting point, Anthropocene geologists claim that we are witnessing the turn of a new page in geohistory. By accepting this claim, we simultaneously re-open the pages of history and start to reassess and rewrite the pasts of various societies or actors because geological and historical dimensions have become interdepen- dent. How have historians, by adding their own repertoire of approaches and tools, engaged with these issues? The epoch-making step has not yet been formally authorized within the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). This commission decides what stratigraphic indicators demarcate geological time boundaries.3 The ICS’s Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (covering the most recent geologic period) established an Anthropocene Working Group in 2009. It was tasked with deliberating and ultimately preparing the decision-making process concerning if and when the Anthropocene has begun. The intervention has already proven consequential. In and beyond academia, people feel driven to contribute, consider, and argue about the interconnections of history, societies, species, and earth history – perhaps ever since 2011, when The Economist featured as its 28 May cover title “Welcome to the Anthropocene” and this rapidly became a catch phrase;4 or ever since geologists christened a new rock specimen “plastiglom- erate” in 2013, making it a sentinel of societies’ interference on a geological scale. For personal use only. 3 Stanley C. Finney and Lucy E. Edwards, The “Anthropocene Epoch.” Scientific Decision or Political Statement?, in: GSAToday 26. 2016, no. 3–4, pp. 4– 10. They explain that ICS is the largest constituent scientific body in the International Union of Geological Sciences, and its 16 subcommissions, each with around twenty voting members, represent more than fifty countries. It defines a single hierarchal set of global chronostratigraphic units with precisely defined boundaries that can be correlated as widely as possible. 4 Welcome to the Anthropocene (Cover), in: The Economist, 28.5.2011, https://www. economist.com/weeklyedition/2011-05-28. See for instance the special exhibition “Welcome to the Anthropocene. The Earth in Our Hands”/“Willkommen im Anthro- pozn. Unsere Verantwortung fr die Zukunft der Erde”, at Deutsches Museum Munich in cooperation with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 2014–2016. Geschichte und Gesellschaft downloaded from www.vr-elibrary.de by Andrea Westermann on February, 9 2021 An update from Munich: Helmuth Trischler and Fabienne Will, Die Provokation des Anthropozns, in: Martina Heßler and Heike Weber (eds.), Provokationen der Technikgeschichte. Zum Reflexionszwang historischer Forschung, Paderborn 2019, pp. 69– 105; see also Jrgen Renn and Bernd Scherer (eds.), Das Anthropozn. Zum Stand der Dinge, Berlin 2015; and Berlin-based international collaborative project “Anthropocene Curriculum,” initiated by Christoph Rosol and Jrgen Renn, https:// www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/anthropocene-curriculum. From a litera- ture perspective: Eva Horn and Hannes Bergthaller, The Anthropocene. Key Issues for the Humanities, Boca Raton 2019. Writing History in the Anthropocene 581 Beyond the question of whether the Anthropocene will be established as a new geological epoch with a well-defined beginning, as a heuristic concept it has been wildly successful for exploring and navigating the temporalities, spatial- ities, and ecologies that come with reconceptualizing human and social history in relation to earth history. Many circles regard the Anthropocene “as a space to debate and not as a closed scientific category to be accepted.”5 Geological epoch-making is not new. Geologists have long investigated the relative age of the earth, the chronological sequence of its lost worlds, and the relative dating of deep time events. Throughout the twentieth century, the geologic time scale has been remodeled many times. The different time units (periods, epochs, or ages) have been filled and prolonged with absolute time. In the late nineteenth century, the age of the earth stood at twenty or 100 million years; now it is 4.5 billion years. Geologists, like historians, these colleagues of elected affinities, were prepared to consider new source material and reconsider the existing records in light of new arguments. As British geologist Archibald Geikie explained in 1899: Until it can be shown that geologists and paleontologists have misinterpreted their records, they are surely well within their logical rights in claiming as much time for the history of this earth as the vast body of evidence accumulated by them demands. So far as I have been able to form an opinion, a hundred million years would suffice for the portion of history registered in the crust’s stratified rocks. But if the paleontologists find such a period too narrow for their requirements, I can see no reason on the geological side why they should not be at liberty to enlarge it as far as they may find to be needful for the evolution of organized existence on the globe.6 The geologic time scale has also been
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