Pluralizing Debates on the Anthropocene Requires Engaging with the Diversity of Existing Scholarship

A recent article in this journal (Jackson Citation2021) validly emphasized that debates about the Anthropocene need to recognize a diverse range of perspectives, worldviews, and forms of knowledge. In doing so, however, the author mischaracterized scholarship on earth system governance as being antithetical to a critical and pluralistic stance on the Anthropocene. In this commentary we address key concerns about the article: selective and misleading quotations regarding the earth system governance literature’s diversity; unwarranted insinuations that juxtapose the implications of this literature with those of slavery and holocausts; and neglect of the breadth and diversity of scholarship on earth system governance. We underscore the need for scholarly debates on the Anthropocene to be informed by a balanced and rigorous assessment of existing scholarship, and for a constructive dialogue between global and locally situated ways of understanding the earth.

Pickering, J., Patterson, J., Biermann, F., Burch, S., Elliott, L., Gupta, A., … Persson, Å. (2022). Pluralizing Debates on the Anthropocene Requires Engaging with the Diversity of Existing Scholarship. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 113(2), e-i-e-vi. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2105296

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24694452.2022.2105296