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With apologies for cross-posting. -- *Call for Papers: Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (Los Angeles, April 9-13, 2013)* * Proposed Session(s): Re-evaluating the Anthropocene, Resituating “Anthropos” * In 2000, Crutzen and Stoermer gave name to a new geological epoch. The “Anthropocene” demarked a post-Holocene present and future in which human activity was understood to be the dominant agent of change in the global environment (2000). Understandably, such a sweeping claim has been viewed unfavorably within critical geographical and environmental scholarship, generating arguments that Crutzen and Stoermer’s concept only offers a new, albeit negative, story of human’s mastery of the earth’s processes. Nigel Clark (2011), for example, has suggested that the term neglects the presence – and force – of terrestrial processes that exist independently from human relationships. Similar criticisms have emerged from the substantial and diverse literature on more-than-human geographies, which aim to dislodge anthropocentrism by granting nonhuman actors and processes more prominent positions in everyday events as well as the meaning and experience of social, political, and historical change (cf. Latour 2004, Serres 2010, Bennett 2011, Badmington 2000, Braun and Whatmore 2010, Castree * et al*. 2004). These perspectives have been instrumental in shaping critical responses to Crutzen and Stoermer’s hyperbolic claims. However, recent work in philosophy and the humanities invites an alternative reading of the “Anthropocene,” one that that is more sympathetic to these critiques and that does not elevate or reinscribe humanity as *the* principal agent of global environmental change, but rather situates it as one force in a field of material processes (Morton 2012). Further, such a reading would recognize unique states of affairs that signal the “collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history” (Chakrabarty 2009) – a sentiment paralleling the suggestion that the Anthropocene announces a shift from the *human* as *biological* entity to that of *humanity* as a *geological* agent. In these sessions we wish to revisit the idea of the Anthropocene in order to work towards a politics capable of responding to the epistemological and ontological challenges posed by 21st century environmental uncertainty. In spite of its originary hyperbole, the idea of the Anthropocene nevertheless compels us to rethink life amongst the myriad and strange mixtures of social, natural, and socio-natural processes, and in doing so come to terms with materialities that far outstrip the relative inconsequentiality of a human experience of space and time. Or, to echo Morton, it inspires us to ‘think big, and maybe even bigger than that’ (2010). Framing questions include, but are not limited to: • How does the introduction of *global*, geological *humanity* as a singular subject challenge, complement, and/or modify discourses of critical environmental thought? • If we identify the ‘anthropos’ of the Anthropocene with something as ‘massively distributed in space and time’ (Morton 2010), what limitations do we (as individuals) experience? And what are the implications for considering issues of environmental ethics, responsibility, and politics? • In what ways does the meaning of “human” change in the movement between biological and geological agency? • How might critical environmental thought acknowledge the crucial role independent terrestrial processes play in the constitution and experience of material realities *while *acknowledging humanity’s capacity to shape the earth at multiple scales and in numerous ways? In light of the above, the organizers of this session welcome novel socio-ecological perspectives that critically reflect on the idea of the Anthropocene, examining its impacts on 21st century environmental thought and politics. Please send inquiries / abstracts of no more than 250 words to Harlan Morehouse (*[log in to unmask]*) and Elizabeth Johnson (* [log in to unmask]*) by October 5th 2012. References: Badmington, N. (2000). Posthumanism. New York, Palgrave. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Braun, B. and S. Whatmore (2010). "The Stuff of Politics: An Introduction." Political Matter. Minneapolis, MN: U. of Minnesota Press. Castree, N., C. Nash, et al. (2004). "Mapping posthumanism: an exchange." Environment and Planning A 36: 1341-1363. Chakrabarty, D. (2009). "The Climate of History: Four Theses." Critical Inquiry 35(Winter): 197-222. Clark, N. (2011). Inhuman nature : sociable life on a dynamic planet. Los Angeles ; London, SAGE. Crutzen, P.J. and Stoermer, E.F. (2000). “The Anthropocene.” IGBP Newsletter 41(17): 17- 18. Latour, B. (2004). Politics of Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morton, T. (2012). “On Entering the Anthropocene.” A lecture at the Environmental Humanities Symposium, University of New South Wales, August 23, 2012. Available at * http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-entering-anthropocene-mp3.html * Morton, T. (2010). The ecological thought. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Serres, M. (2010). Biogea. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal Press. -- Harlan Morehouse PhD Candidate, Department of Geography University of Minnesota, Twin Cities [log in to unmask] http://www.geog.umn.edu/people/studentprofile.php?UID=more0206 -- Visiting Lecturer, Department of Geography University of Vermont [log in to unmask]