When the term Anthropocene was coined in 2000, it described a geological age characterized by the effects of humans on the environment. The “age of humans,” in essence, placed Homo sapiens at the center of the Earth’s concerns.

Two anthropologists, Jeffrey Hoelle, an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara (left), and Nicholas C. Kawa of Ohio State University (right), argue in a new paper that such a view is too narrow and privileges the human over a more comprehensive view of life and the environment.

“Placing the Anthropos in Anthropocene” appears in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers as part of a special issue on “The Anthropocene.”

“The seed of the article really came from the name ‘Anthropocene,’ literally the age of humans,” Hoelle said. “We wanted to question how ‘the human’ as an actor and driver of environmental change is conceptualized in influential approaches to the Anthropocene. Who and what is included in this view of humanity? Also, what is missing when we consider humans as distinct from the rest of the life on earth? 

“We wanted to think broadly about the Anthropocene — looking across time and space, to draw attention to the influence of economic and political systems and ideologies of human-environment separation that support a specific way of engaging with the world,” he continued. “This helped us to better understand how a recent and somewhat limited view of humanity is implicated in environmental crisis and human inequality in the present, but also how this anthropocentrism is projected to the future, such as with technological solutions to the climate change and plans for terraforming Mars.”

Kawa, an assistant professor at Ohio State, said that in some of his previous writing he wondered how “uncritical acceptance of the Anthropocene might risk projecting an all-too-human vision of the world. In other words, if we begin to see everything as influenced by the human presence, it may be difficult to avoid falling victim to our own self-obsession.”

“But in writing this piece with Jeff,” he continued, “I began to ask a different question, which is basically, who fits under this umbrella of humanity? And what assumptions are taken for granted when we talk about ‘the human’ at the center of the Anthropocene?”

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