Ecological Entanglements in the Anthropocene

Edited by Nicholas Holm and Sy Taffel - Contributions by Octavia Cade; Sean Cubitt; Charles Dawson; Victoria Grieves; James Holcombe; Ann O’Brien; Christopher Orchard; David Orchard; Peter Orchard; Jacob Otter; Gareth Stanton; Sharon Stevens and Sita Venkateswar

This edited collection explores the relationships between humans and nature at a time when the traditional sense of separation between human cultures and a natural wilderness is being eroded. The ‘Anthropocene,’ whose literal translation is the ‘Age of Man,’ is one way of marking these planetary changes to the Earth system. Global climate change and rising sea levels are two prominent examples of how nature can no longer be simply thought of as something outside and removed from humans (and vice versa).

This collection applies the concepts of ecology and entanglement to address pressing political, social, and cultural issues surrounding human relationships with the nonhuman world in terms of ‘working with nature.’ It asks, are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms and practices might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider using the term nature in favour of terms such as environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? How might we forge perspectives and enact practices which build resilience and community across species and spaces, constructing relationships with nonhumans which go beyond discourses of pollution, degradation and destruction? Bringing together a range of contributors from across multiple academic disciplines, activists and artists, this book examines how these questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.

Lexington Books

Pages: 276 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-3569-4 • Hardback • December 2016 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-3570-0 • eBook • December 2016 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Nature, Science / Life Sciences / Ecology, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory

Ecological Entanglements in the Anthropocene

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This edited collection explores the relationships between humans and nature at a time when the traditional sense of separation between human cultures and a natural wilderness is being eroded. The ‘Anthropocene,’ whose literal translation is the ‘Age of Man,’ is one way of marking these planetary changes to the Earth system. Global climate change and rising sea levels are two prominent examples of how nature can no longer be simply thought of as something outside and removed from humans (and vice versa).

This collection applies the concepts of ecology and entanglement to address pressing political, social, and cultural issues surrounding human relationships with the nonhuman world in terms of ‘working with nature.’ It asks, are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms and practices might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider using the term nature in favour of terms such as environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? How might we forge perspectives and enact practices which build resilience and community across species and spaces, constructing relationships with nonhumans which go beyond discourses of pollution, degradation and destruction? Bringing together a range of contributors from across multiple academic disciplines, activists and artists, this book examines how these questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 276 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-3569-4 • Hardback • December 2016 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-3570-0 • eBook • December 2016 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Nature, Science / Life Sciences / Ecology, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory

Author

Nicholas Holm is lecturer of media studies at Massey University.

Sy Taffel is lecturer of media studies at Massey University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Ecological Crises, Nonhumans and the Age of Man - Sy Taffel and Nicholas Holm

Part One: Nonhuman Agency

Chapter One – Carbon Bonds: Coal Economics and Aesthetics – Sean Cubitt
Chapter Two – Consider the Lawnmower: Aesthetics, Politics and Entanglements of Suburban Nature – Nicholas Holm
Chapter Three – Learning with the River: on Intercultural Gifts from the Whanganui – Charles Dawson
Chapter Four – From Wai 262 to Water: Towards Postcolonial Property Right in Aotearoa New Zealand – Jacob Otter

Part Two: Cultivation and Culture

Chapter Five – The Plough as Settler Colonial Cultural Icon: Voices from the Other Side of the Blade – Victoria Grieves
Chapter Six – Conserving Land through Kindly Use and Reciprocity: Using the Land and Being Used by the Land – Anne O’Brien
Chapter Seven – “One Loaf of Bread at a Time”: System Change through Community Food Initiatives – Sharon Stevens
Chapter Eight – In Different Voices: Engaging with Human-Non-Human Entanglements – Sita Venkateswar

Part Three: Epistemology, Aesthetics and Mediation

Chapter Nine– Photographic Reflections on Landscape Change in Regional Australia – Christopher Orchard and James Holcomb
Chapter Ten – Nature as Creative Catalyst: Building Poetic Environmental Narratives through the Artists in Antarctica Programme – Octavia Cade
Chapter Eleven – Mediating the ‘Deep’: Media Work with Oceans and Seas – Gareth Stanton
Chapter Twelve – Exiled in the Bush: A History of Landscape Transformation in Post-European Settlement New South Wales – David Orchard and Peter Orchard
Chapter Thirteen – Mapping the Anthropocene – Sy Taffel

Reviews

Ecological Entanglements in the Anthropocene travels across the planet, offering critical analysis of the multiple contexts which define the ecological mess we are in; these travels from British coal mines to Antarctica, across oceans and seas to New Zealand and many other localities provides an interdisciplinary and convincing argument to approach the Anthropocene along the lines of the (post-)colonial legacies and the current political economy of disaster capitalism.
— Jussi Parikka, Professor in Technological Culture and Aesthetics, University of Southampton