The Anthropocene as Natural History: Authority, Crisis, and Politics of the Earth

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 14. Morality, Legitimacy, and Crises

Abstract

The Anthropocene can be understood as a way of thinking about the relationship between nature and culture. Scholars debate what this way of thinking means for governing contemporary ecological crises such as climate change, droughts, and rising seas. I engage with this line of inquiry by studying the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, developing a reading of the implied governmentality of the museum’s use of the Anthropocene narrative. The first part of the paper positions natural history museums as cultural institutions with authority over public perceptions of nature. The second part of the paper reviews the literature on the question of the Anthropocene’s governmentality, centered on how the Anthropocene constructs the historical narrative of the crises and how it is used to call for or justify solutions to the problem. The final part of the paper draws on my case study of the Carnegie to understand the Anthropocene’s implied governance as a narrative in a museum space. I argue two key points. First, the Anthropocene establishes scientific authority over the politics of Earth systems by rendering the crises visible. Second, by making previous relations between science, politics, and nature ambiguous, the crisis is politicized, encouraging the public to engage and think in new ways that are not overly delimited. This adds nuance to arguments that cast the Anthropocene as a call for emergency, elite-led governance, suggesting that museums can be sites where genuine politicizing of nature-culture occurs.

Author

• Mitchell Timothy Kiefer, University of Pittsburgh