Shifting Paradigms of the Anthropocene

As a conceptual framework, the Anthropocene has fostered transdisciplinary analyses of global anthropogenic impacts in diverse fields: Earth system sciences, conservation biology, and the environmental humanities. The transdisciplinarity of these analyses reflects a paradigm shift in critiquing the duality of humankind as both a global change agent and just another species affecting, and being affected by, dynamic planetary systems. The duality in theorizing global anthropogenic harms presents an opportunity to decenter the human. Yet while rethinking anthropocentrism illuminates inequities in human populations and acknowledges agency among nonhuman actors, examining anthropogenic impacts nevertheless raises ethical questions, effectively recentering the human. Is there an obligation to witness and account for their disparate causes and effects? What does such accounting look like? This ethical issue is evident in affective responses to threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. Focusing on responses to these threats in conservation practices, heritage management, the visual arts, and scenarios of human futures, this book examines the productive ambivalence of such responses to the challenge of the Anthropocene paradigm shift.