The Anthropocene as an Age of Scalar Complexity

Dürbeck, Gabriele; Hüpkes, Philip

doi:10.4324/9781003136989-1

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Moreover, further challenges arise with the need to combine multiple and contradictory scalar lenses, be they planetary, global, international, transnational, regional, local or individual, when reconfiguring collective governance responses to attend to more-than-human concerns. 69 Nor is it clear how, if at all, 'planetary' responses could unfold from better and closer integration and alignment of these multiple and overlapping scalar lenses, or whether institutional changes may instead evolve on more organic, ungoverned and chaotic lines. Questions of degree are also prescient for critically examining the extent to which the instruments and institutions of domestic, international and transnational legal orderings are capable of overcoming their origins as tools of exploitation and dominance over 'nature'.…”

Section: Institutional Architectures and Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene

Fleurke,

Leach,

Lindahl

et al. 2024

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

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The Anthropocene thesis, in its rejection of both the modernist separation between ‘humans’ and ‘nonhumans’ as well as in its treatment of ‘humans’ as a singular global geophysical force, presents fundamental challenges to constitutional theory and practice. First, in terms of conceptual and foundational transformations, the Anthropocene provokes the reconceptualization of legal relations as never being limited to human concerns, but as always and already part of more-than-human collectives. These legal relations are organized by the co-agency of humans and nonhumans, in recognition of shared vulnerabilities and in relations premised on care. This reconceptualization demands a new understanding of representational practices that could constitutionalize more-than-human relations as political and legal collectives. Second, emergent technologies such as genetic and climate engineering introduce fundamental questions about regulatory modalities available in the Anthropocene, and the role that law plays in this regard. Such technologies have given rise to the possibility of ‘ruling by design’, by technologically mediating ‘natural’ forces or Earth system processes to achieve pre-established regulatory goals. This possibility raises critical concerns about the remaining role for law in legitimising and enabling such developments. Finally, the temporal dimensions of the Anthropocene thesis cast a critical light on law’s potential for driving radical transformations in (un)governance. In imagining future legal architectures capable of manifesting more-than-human constitutionalism, it is necessary to excavate the historical role that foundational legal principles and institutions – such as sovereignty and personhood – have had in facilitating exploitative relations between and beyond humans.

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Section: Institutional Architectures and Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene

Fleurke,

Leach,

Lindahl

et al. 2024

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

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“…According to Haff (2014b: 131), this inaccessibility of the technosphere “distorts our perception of the Anthropocene.” In addition to the above-mentioned critique of the large-scale perspective, this is precisely the main reason for the overall interest in scale, manifested in a growing number of publications explicitly dealing with scalar issues (cf. Dürbeck and Hüpkes, 2021). The Anthropocene requires an understanding of the manifold, oftentimes incompatible spatial, quantitative, and temporal scales at which anthropocenic phenomena occur (cf.…”

Section: Introduction: the Anthropocene Systems Thinking And The Role...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The technical non-reproducibility of the Earth system: Scale, Biosphere 2, and T.C. Boyle’s Terranauts

Hüpkes

Dürbeck

2021

The Anthropocene Review

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The Anthropocene concept draws on a technologically mediated macroscale, allegedly all-encompassing perspective on the interconnectedness of planetary, social and cultural systems. It is thus part of a genealogy traceable to systems thinking and cybernetic imaginaries of planetary-scale controllability; but at the same time, it relies on a techno-scientific infrastructure that is part of the accumulation of technical entities which Peter Haff calls “technosphere.” This oscillation between technology as a means of control and as an autonomous system that is inaccessible to sensual experience constitutes a theoretical challenge. Responding to this challenge, we combine Haff’s “technosphere” theory with a focus on the aspect of scale and the environmental character of technology. We discuss the Biosphere 2 experiment and its literary reflection in T.C. Boyle’s novel The Terranauts (2016) as an example of an attempted lower-scale technological reproduction of the Earth system. We show that the experiment suggests that technology has to be conceived as both scale variant (its functions differ across scales) and independent from its scale (as always already constituted by its respective environment).

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The Anthropocene as an Age of Scalar Complexity

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene

Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene

The technical non-reproducibility of the Earth system: Scale, Biosphere 2, and T.C. Boyle’s Terranauts

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