While the physical and natural sciences offer clear contributions to understanding the Anthropocene - the geological age in which humans are the dominant force shaping the planet - the role and value of the social sciences in understanding this agenda have been little explored. 

The Cabot Institute hosted a major international conference - Society in the Anthropocene – on 24 and 25 June 2013, to address and discuss these questions across the social science disciplines. 

The conference brought socio-legal, political, sociological, anthropological and geographical perspectives to issues such as global environmental uncertainty, carbon politics, new patterns of urban resilience and global containment, and changing relationships between human and non-human worlds.  The aim of the conference was to generate innovative understandings of the Anthropocene and its emergent constellations of life and knowledge. 

Downloads

Below are the audio recordings (MP3) and associated powerpoint presentations (PDF) from the conference.  Please note not all presentations are available for download.

Day 1, session 1 - Carbon politics

• Katherine Gibson, University of Western Sydney - Ethical concerns, community economies and learning to be affected by the Anthropocene [PDF, 6.79 MB] [MP3, 35 MB]
• Peter Newell, University of Sussex - The Politics and Political Economy of Governing Carbon [PDF, 778 KB] [MP3, 21.1 MB]
• Erik Swyngedouw, University of Manchester - Anthropocenic Promises, The End of Nature, Climate Change and the Process of Post-Politicization [PDF, 1.03 MB] [MP3, 31.5 MB]

Day 1, session 2 - Urban resilience and global containment

• Tania Li, University of Toronto - What is Land?  Making-up a Resource [PDF, 3.27 MB] [MP3, 29.1 MB]
• Nigel Clark, University of Lancaster - The Geologic City:  Urban Pyrotechnics and the Prehistory of the Anthropocene - Not available for download

Keynote speech

• Mark Duffield, University of Bristol [MP3, 62.7 MB]

Day 2, session 1 - Global environmental uncertainty

• Bradley Evans, University of Bristol - Atmos: Life beyond the bio-political reckoning [PDF, 2.76 MB] [MP3, 26.2 MB]
• Gísli Pálsson, University of Iceland - Housekeeping: Anthropology, Oikos, and the Anthropocene [PDF, 1.25 MB] [MP3, 33.2 MB]
• Andrew Barry, University of Oxford - The Impacts of the Anthropocene - Not available for download

Day 2, session 2 - Capitalism, biotechnology and the biosphere

• Celia Roberts, University of Lancaster - The end of sex? Reproduction and the Anthropocene  - Not available for download
• Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago - Clinical labor, bioavailability and surplus health: Toward a health theory of value - Not available for download

Other information

Download the programme [PDF 331 KB] (PDF, 393kB)

Read about the speakers and their abstracts.

CREDIT: Image at the top of this page of 'Dubai from space' by NASA Earth Observatory

This event was co-sponsored by the journal Economy and Society.

Society in the Anthropocene delegates Philippa Bayley