Beginning the “End” of the World: Toward A Sociology of Alternative Futures in the Anthropocene

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Environmental Sociology Imaginations and Futures

Abstract

In an era of accelerating ecological and societal crises resulting from the overlapping processes of extraction, displacement, and colonization of people and landscapes, there is a need for a more subversive sociology that reckons with the realities and possibilities of the Anthropocene. A sociological analysis of the Anthropocene entails questions of temporality, the colonial and capitalist roots of climate destabilization, and the kinds of futures that are envisioned as possible in the face of potential ecological collapse. However, dominant framings of the Anthropocene and futurity in contemporary sociology remain largely premised upon Western ideas of fragmented, linear time and social progress. Such temporalities rely on a universalistic—and, at times, apocalyptic—projection of the Anthropocene that has yet to engage with previous “endings” of worlds brought about by colonization and alternative pathways for this geological age offered by non-Western temporalities and futurisms. This essay considers the following questions: Whose future in the Anthropocene are we studying? Who belongs in this “civilization” that is presumably heading towards imminent ecological and societal collapse? What “world” are we seeking to preserve? How might alternative, non-linear views of the Anthropocene provide new paradigms for social transformation in the midst of ongoing ecological and political crises? To explore these questions, I draw from interdisciplinary perspectives of the Anthropocene and the future which outline cyclical temporalities and non-linear, counter-apocalyptic futures grounded primarily in North American indigenous knowledges. Ultimately, decolonial and counter-apocalyptic approaches to the Anthropocene can offer sociologists new paradigms to examine various social phenomena such as environmental injustice, environmental and indigenous sovereignty movements, climate resilience, and alternative systems of governance. In this theoretically-driven essay, I propose that a sociology for the Anthropocene must be one that is open to radical re-imaginings of current and future social arrangements in pursuit of collective survival.

Author

• Marina Rivera Ramos, Rutgers University-New Brunswick