Article ID: CBB907621877

Geophysical Agency in the Anthropocene: Engineering a Road and River to Rocky Mountain National Park (October 2017)

unapi

Proponents of the Anthropocene epoch posit that human activities now powerfully influence the Earth’s governing systems. Many environmental scholars have offered alternative concepts for this new geologic epoch to challenge its outward anthropocentrism and tendency to flatten the diversity of the world’s people into a single planetary humanity. But in doing so, these critiques distort a more distributive and systemic understanding of agency. This article suggests that geophysical agency offers historians a more useful and precise conceptual term for interpreting connections among human ideas and actions, material systems, and geologic change. One way that human undertakings have functioned geologically has been by moving earth and inscribing asphalt over an extended chronology of the Great Acceleration. Examining 1930s highway construction in Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon offers a window into some of the historical processes that have defined geophysical agency.

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Authors & Contributors
Dana Luciano
Eric DeLony
Vincent Ialenti
Schulte, Steven C.
McPherson, Robert S.
Cornelius W. Hauck
Concepts
National parks and reserves
Geology
Tourism
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Colonialism
Anthropocene
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
Places
United States
Colorado (U.S.)
Rocky Mountains (U.S.)
Hawaii (U.S.)
New Mexico (U.S.)
Arizona (U.S.)
Institutions
Colorado Railroad Museum
Oxford University
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