Sabine Höhler: "Anthropocene History"

Research presentation by Sabine Höhler, Royal Institute of Technology. 

Abstract: 

In the Anthropocene, human history and Earth history become entangled. This situation is a challenge to all historians, but particularly those who study the history of science, technology and environment, fields that are concerned with the means and processes that have changed the trajectory of the Earth system and will continue to influence its future. Assuming that history is an essentially meaning-making and navigational tool for understanding our contemporary world, the lecture formulates a novel, integrated approach to past, present, and future history. It sketches a research program “Anthropocene History” as an object and as a mode of writing history, building on advances in Earth System and Anthropocene science, multiple strands of work in history and the neighbouring field of the Environmental Humanities. The program aims to mend the longstanding separation between human and Earth history that the recognition of the Anthropocene revokes.

Image: Anthropocene layer: Layer of rubbish from a former landfill that fell from the top of a cliff, Wikimedia Commons