Humans and Technology in the Anthropocene: Six Rules 126 Peter Haff Vernadsky’S Philosophical Legacy: a Perspective from the Anthropocene 137 Bertrand Guillaume
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ANR_1_2_Cover.indd 2 04/07/2014 11:41:20 AM Volume 1 Number 2 August 2014 Contents Research articles Contingencies of the Anthropocene: Lessons from the ‘Neolithic’ 113 Lesley Head Humans and technology in the Anthropocene: Six rules 126 Peter Haff Vernadsky’s philosophical legacy: A perspective from the Anthropocene 137 Bertrand Guillaume Perspectives and controversies Does pre-industrial warming double the anthropogenic total? 147 William Ruddiman, Steve Vavrus, John Kutzbach and Feng He Anthropocene Futures 154 Frans Berkhout Reviews Translating science for decision makers to help navigate the Anthropocene 160 Anthony D Barnosky, Elizabeth A Hadly, Rodolfo Dirzo, Mikael Fortelius and Nils Chr Stenseth Redefining historical climatology in the Anthropocene 171 Franz Mauelshagen ANR0010.1177/2053019614529745The Anthropocene ReviewHead 529745research-article2014 Research article The Anthropocene Review 2014, Vol. 1(2) 113 –125 Contingencies of the Anthropocene: © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: Lessons from the ‘Neolithic’ sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2053019614529745 anr.sagepub.com Lesley Head Abstract The emerging Anthropocene concept contains two conceptual challenges: its developing narrative tends to present a teleological view of history as linear and deterministic, which is at odds with evidence of evolutionary and historical contingency; and the species category at its core sits uneasily with both the causal details of historical changes and the complexity of conceptualizing human–nature relations. We can learn from the ways similar challenges have been dealt with in the long debate over the origins of agriculture. A body of critical and empirical scholarship now conceptualizes agriculture in more dynamic, contingent terms, but has dealt less well with the second, more difficult, challenge. To realize the Anthropocene’s potential to suggest restorative and less fatalistic approaches to the future, we need to work as hard on the concepts as on their constitutive empirical evidence. Keywords archaeology, capitalism, contingency, dualism, historical process, hunter-gatherer, more-than- human, origins of agriculture Introduction The emerging concept of the Anthropocene challenges us to think differently about many things. It challenges the ideal of economic growth that helped propel it, particularly its manifestation over the second half of the 20th century (Steffen et al., 2011: 862). If human impact on the Earth can be translated into human responsibility for the Earth, the concept may help stimulate appropriate societal responses and/or invoke appropriate planetary stewardship (DeFries et al., 2012; Ellis, 2011). Even so, while the concept has emerged out of palaeoecological, archaeological and histori- cal perspectives on Earth systems, there is great uncertainty about the future, and how we can apply any lessons of the past, since ‘Earth is currently operating in a no-analogue state’ (Crutzen and Steffen, 2003: 253). The evidence of the Anthropocene requires us to rebuild its own conceptual University of Wollongong, Australia Corresponding author: Lesley Head, Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (AUSCCER), University of Wollongong, Wollongong 2522, Australia. Email: [email protected] Downloaded from anr.sagepub.com by dusan barok on February 6, 2015 114 The Anthropocene Review 1(2) scaffolding in order to imagine and enact the world differently (Sayre, 2012). This will be a long- term project. In this paper I aim to contribute constructively to that project by addressing two connected chal- lenges that hamper the potential of the Anthropocene, as concept, to help us think differently in the necessary ways: (1) The emerging narrative tends to present human history in a linear, deterministic and teleo- logical frame at odds with both scientific and social scientific understandings of evolution- ary and historical contingency. This may be an inadvertent by-product of the geological conversation in which the concept is often discussed, rather than a deliberate strategy, but it needs to be addressed. (2) The anthropos at the core is a slippery concept. On one hand the human is understood as an increasingly dominant force: ‘our own species, has become so large and active that it now rivals some of the great forces of Nature’ (Steffen et al., 2011: 43). On the other, ‘the ancient dichotomy of humans and nature is now empirically false at the global scale’ (Sayre, 2012: 63). Is the anthropos a separate and definable actor, or a variable force in an assemblage with others, or both? As others have recognized (Malm and Hornborg, 2014), we have conceptu- alized the Anthropocene with an undifferentiated human, again contrary to the abundant evidence of spatial and temporal differences in influences below the species level. Further, the Anthropocene is depicted as an outcome of human power, yet the assemblage thus cre- ated is characterized by surprise, uncertainty and lack of control (G Harris, 2007). This paper identifies and discusses the insights that the Anthropocene debate might gain from the question of agricultural origins. Much recent Anthropocene debate is reminiscent of earlier discus- sions over the Neolithic Revolution. When and where did it start? What were the drivers, what were the responses and what are the reliable empirical indicators? In the last two decades such questions have been reframed in new approaches seeking to ‘rethink the Neolithic’ (Thomas, 1991) – famously as neither Neolithic nor Revolution (e.g. Gamble, in Bellwood et al., 2007). In an ongo- ing careful exercise,