Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene: A Personal View of What Is to Be Studied

Abstract

Although the term anthropocene proposed by geologists and climatologists has created much debate, it is hard to resist the importance it could have to define the discipline of anthropology. For a discipline dedicated to the plurality of cultures, the fact that earth scientists insist on bringing on the foreground still one more definition of the ‘anthropos’, this time considered as a new force of nature, has enormous consequences for the discipline. The chapter lists several of those consequences that could reopen a conversation between ‘physical’ and ‘cultural’ anthropology and, of special relevance to the vast question of ‘sustainability’, reopen the ways in which anthropology could be politically relevant.

This chapter was first presented as the Distinguished Lecture at the American Association of Anthropologists annual meeting held in Washington in December 2014.