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Disciplinarity, Epistemic Friction, and the ‘Anthropocene’ Jacob Barber PhD Thesis University of Edinburgh 2018 ii Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own original work and that it has not been submitted in whole or in part for any other degree or professional qualification. The research is entirely my own except where otherwise acknowledged. Jacob Barber Institute of Geography School of Geosciences University of Edinburgh June 2018 iii iv Acknowledgements I want to thank everyone who has helped me bring this thesis to completion. This includes my partner, Megan, my brothers and my parents, and my friends for providing emotional support. I would also like to thank everyone in Benbecula and Drummond Street more broadly. Special shout-outs to Richard, the Daniels, Kirsty, and Faten for keeping me sane at the end. I am endlessly grateful to all the participants in this research for giving me something to talk about, my supervisors Franklin and Pablo, and my mentors Nina and Janet for helping me to figure out how to put my thoughts into words. v vi Abstract This thesis explores the scientific controversy over the ‘Anthropocene’, a putative new epoch of geological time conceived in 2000 by atmospheric chemist and earth system scientist Paul Crutzen. I trace the conception of the Anthropocene and explore its spread through a range of disciplines from the earth sciences to the humanities. Particular attention is paid to the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. This group was tasked with considering whether or not the Anthropocene should be subject to stratigraphic formalisation and be made ‘real’ insofar as the discipline of stratigraphy was concerned. The group’s efforts, and the wide-ranging response to them, reveal the challenge of making sense of knowledge as it moves across different disciplines, settings, and contexts. While the AWG was tasked with producing a specifically stratigraphic response to the rising prominence of the Anthropocene, in performing their investigation the group took on board wide-ranging multidisciplinary expertise. As well as raising questions about the appropriate criteria for the group’s investigation, the response to the group’s efforts from a diverse range of disciplines illustrates the disunity of interdisciplinary work. The movement of the controversy from scholarly journals into an increasingly public sphere reveals further questions about the relationship between scientific authority and society as a whole. While different communities disagreed about the scientific value of the Anthropocene, many shared in their recognition of the role this scientific framing could play in fomenting a political response to anthropogenic global change. This thesis argues that scholarly debates about the Anthropocene illustrate questions about authority, epistemic privilege, and the relationship between disciplines that have ramifications beyond the controversy itself. vii viii Lay Summary This thesis explores sixteen years of arguments over a novel concept, the ‘Anthropocene’. That concept suggests that human impacts have driven the planet into a new period of earth history. During the period this thesis covers, the Anthropocene grew to increasing prominence across a range of disciplines from the earth sciences to the humanities. And, by the year 2016, the concept was able to command the attention of the international media. At the heart of arguments over the Anthropocene lay a question about the extent to which disciplines could leave to others decisions about the usage of concepts which fall within their own areas of expertise. With the Anthropocene this was primarily a challenge for stratigraphy, the discipline that has been historically charged with the division of geological time. However, because the concept carried implications beyond the borders of this discipline alone, stratigraphers were not the only group affected by a concept whose expansive scope afforded it both scientific and political meaning. This thesis does not attempt to pre-empt the final outcome of the controversy. Instead, it explores how and why scholars seek to engage with concepts that might otherwise be nothing more than esoteric technical concerns for a more narrowly defined community. By drawing on extensive analysis of materials produced in the Anthropocene controversy and primary data collected from scholars who were willing to engage with the concept, this thesis argues that the Anthropocene controversy shows what happens when the boundaries between concepts and terminologies, between disciplines, and between science and society collide. And, I present an important case study that illustrates how the ‘facts’ and the ‘politics’ of a concept like the Anthropocene are unavoidably permeated by non-scientific values and motivations. In so doing, I extend discussions of interdisciplinarity and its particular role in the performance of contemporary research to explore what it means for scholars to pursue unclear goals with uncertain outcomes in the name of societal relevance. ix Table of Contents Front Matter iii-xiv Declaration iii Acknowledgements v Abstract vii Lay Summary ix Table of Contents x List of Acronyms xii Lit of Tables of Figures xiii Chapter 1: Introduction 1-22 1.1. Introduction 1 1.2. This Study 2 1.3. The Anthropocene Controversy 5 1.4. Other Scholarship on the Anthropocene 10 1.5 Thesis Structure 18 Chapter 2: Literature Review 23-52 2.1. Introduction 23 2.2. Constructing Scientific Knowledge 24 2.2.1. Epistemic Things and Stabilisation 25 2.2.2. Representation and What is at Stake 29 2.3. ‘Interdisciplinarity’ as Ideology 32 2.3.1. The Rise of ‘Interdisciplinarity’ 33 2.3.2. Authority in a Crowded Room 36 2.4. ‘Science’ and ‘Society’ 41 2.4.1. Science, Society, and the Spaces in Between 42 2.4.2. Knowledge in the World and ‘Outformations’ 47 2.5. Conclusion 51 Chapter 3: Methodology and Ethics 53-80 3.1. Introduction 53 3.2. Approach 54 3.2.1. Analysis of Anthropocene Literatures 54 3.2.2. Interview, Survey, and Email Correspondence 62 3.3. Methodological Considerations 69 3.3.1. Validity 69 3.3.2. Ethics 72 3.3.3. Negotiating Access 74 3.3.4. Handling Sensitive Data 77 3.4. Conclusion 80 Chapter 4: The Onset of the Anthropocene Controversy 81-107 4.1. Introduction 81 4.2. Ad-Libbing the Anthropocene 83 4.3. Knowledge on Whose Authority? And to What End? 90 4.4. Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize-Winner 101 4.5. Conclusion 106 Chapter 5: Epistemic Burden and the Establishment of the Anthropocene Working 108-128 Group 5.1. Introduction 108 5.2. The Early Stratigraphic Response to the Anthropocene 109 5.3. The Establishment and Growth of the Anthropocene Working Group 115 x 5.4. The Anthropocene as an Epistemic Burden for Stratigraphy 121 5.5. Conclusion 127 Chapter 6: Multidisciplinary Tension and the Role of the Anthropocene 129-154 6.1. Introduction 129 6.2. Negotiating Multidisciplinarity in the AWG 130 6.3. Political Advocacy and the ‘Mission’ of the AWG 141 6.4. Conclusion 153 Chapter 7: Invisibility and Opportunism in the Spread of the Anthropocene 155-181 7.1. Introduction 155 7.2. Other Anthropocenes and Other Stories 156 7.3. The Anthropocene as ‘Opportunity’ 166 7.4. Disciplinary Invisibility 174 7.5 Conclusion 180 Chapter 8: Discursive Space, Epistemic Friction, and the Fractional Coherence of the 182-210 Anthropocene 8.1. Introduction 182 8.2. ‘Lock in’ and the Stabilisation of Discursive Space 183 8.3. Epistemic Friction and the Anthropocene 192 8.4. Fractional Coherence and the ‘Dual Career’ of the Anthropocene 201 8.5. Conclusion 209 Chapter 9: Media Interest, Semi-Public Debate, and Boundary Work 211-246 9.1. Introduction 211 9.2. The Role of the Media and Semi-Public Debate 212 9.3. Boundary Work and Retreat 223 9.4. The Best of Both Worlds 235 9.5. Conclusion 245 Chapter 10: Conclusion 247-265 10.1 The Status of the Anthropocene Controversy 247 10.2. Avenues for Further Research 250 10.3. Disciplinarity, Epistemic Friction, and the Anthropocene 255 Works Cited 267-321 Appendices 322-334 Appendix 1: Survey for the Members of the Anthropocene Working Group 322 Appendix 2: Full Participant List 325 Appendix 3: Collaboration over access to the Anthropocene Working Group 329 Appendix 4: Example Information Sheet and Consent Form 330 xi List of Acronyms AGU American Geophysical Union ANT Actor-Network Theory AWG Anthropocene Working Group ESS Earth system science BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa CFCs chlorofluorocarbon gases CNRS French National Centre for Scientific Research EMIC Earth-system model of intermediate complexity GSA Geological Society of America GSSA Global Standard