Article ID: CBB209113037

A Planetary Anthropocene? Views From Africa (2022)

unapi

The Anthropocene is built on complex technological systems that span the globe. Historians of science have done much to document the emergence of this “technosphere.” Yet more interdisciplinary and regionally diverse approaches are needed to understand the complexity and unpredictability of the technosphere in our Anthropocene times. Rather than assuming a single planetary phenomenon, this essay emphasizes the widely varied lived experiences of the Anthropocene. Taking industrialized mining and oil drilling as examples of the technosphere, it examines three African localities of resource extraction—the Congolese Copperbelt, the South African Witwatersrand, and the Niger Delta in Nigeria—to ask why the environmental transformations of large-scale industry have caused violent protest in one locality but apparent acquiescence in others. The concept of the Anthropocene urges historians of science to connect questions about scientific knowledge and technology to issues of environmental change, economic organization, political power, social differentiation, and cultural imagination. This broad approach, the essay suggests, can prove extremely fruitful in explaining historical variations and contemporary responses to the Anthropocene.

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Authors & Contributors
Bixler, R. Patrick
Cristina Baldacci
James Chike Nwankwo
Sarah E. Vaughn
Sample, V. Alaric
Henriette Steiner
Concepts
Climate change
Anthropocene
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Environmental history
Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge
Historiography
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
United States
Nigeria
South Africa
India
Mekong River
Guyana; British Guiana
Institutions
International Council for Science
Science for the People (SftP)
Future Earth. Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production Knowledge-Action Network
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