Anthropocene in Friction. Dis-Encounters Between Geology and History

Abstract

This article brings attention to the need to introduce social sciences to the Global Environmental Change conversation in order to discuss the notion of the “Anthropocene” postulated by prominent natural scientists (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002). The focus of analysis concentrates on and the way the local and the global are put into friction (Tsing 2005). If natural scientists have achieved to show the dangers Earth currently confronts, what is not yet clear is if they understand how human societies, the main driver of this geological era, work. They tend to consider humans as a specie, so they make a reductionist idea of humans as a compact unity, taking away our knowledge that teaches that they are “social” (Moore 2015). This article starts with a discussion about the apparent common understanding on the “global,” by natural and social sciences. This article poses important challenges to social scientists, is critical toward the Anthropocene concept, and aspires to suggest critical thinking contributions on the global and its friction with the local. This article illustrates how, through the idea of the Anthropocene, Geology meets History in ways that are not easy to accept for social scientists because, they are right when they argue that the “anthropos” of the Anthropocene cannot be reduced to a “specie” because he/she is a socio-ecological entity.

Keywords

• Anthropocene
• Globalization
• Global Environmental Change
• World
• Earth
• Environmental History