Landscapes of the Anthropocene: from dominion to dependence?

TY - CHAP

T1 - Landscapes of the Anthropocene

T2 - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies

AU - Pawson, Eric

AU - Christensen, Andreas Aagaard

N1 - Conference code: 1

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The purpose of this chapter is to explore the dramatic increase in the power of human agency over the environment through an analysis of landscape change. It discusses the processes that have shaped new landscapes in the capitalist world before focusing on one place that is characteristic of the shifting balance of ecological agency in favour of humans during the Anthropocene. Banks Peninsula on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island was first settled by Polynesian peoples within the last few hundred years. The nature of their footprint contrasts with the dramatic change wrought by Europeans since the 1840s, when indigenous forests were transformed into improved landscapes of sown grass. The chapter is shaped by a broad question. What can be learned from this place about the ways in which people have exercised and are coming to terms with what Gibson-Graham and Roelvink describe as our ‘gargantuan agency’ and ‘almost unbearable level of responsibility’ in the Anthropocene (2009, 321)? It concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘middle landscapes’ as one means by which the planetary dominion of humanity might be tempered with a realization of its dependence on terrestrial ecosystems for continued survival.

AB - The purpose of this chapter is to explore the dramatic increase in the power of human agency over the environment through an analysis of landscape change. It discusses the processes that have shaped new landscapes in the capitalist world before focusing on one place that is characteristic of the shifting balance of ecological agency in favour of humans during the Anthropocene. Banks Peninsula on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island was first settled by Polynesian peoples within the last few hundred years. The nature of their footprint contrasts with the dramatic change wrought by Europeans since the 1840s, when indigenous forests were transformed into improved landscapes of sown grass. The chapter is shaped by a broad question. What can be learned from this place about the ways in which people have exercised and are coming to terms with what Gibson-Graham and Roelvink describe as our ‘gargantuan agency’ and ‘almost unbearable level of responsibility’ in the Anthropocene (2009, 321)? It concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘middle landscapes’ as one means by which the planetary dominion of humanity might be tempered with a realization of its dependence on terrestrial ecosystems for continued survival.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Modernization

KW - Development

KW - Post-Colonial Territories

KW - Post-productivism

KW - Faculty of Science

KW - Environmental history

KW - Landscape management

KW - Banks Peninsula

KW - New Zealand

KW - Forest management

KW - Forest history

KW - Rephotography

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-0-415-71656-7

SN - 978-0-415-71657-4

T3 - Routledge Environmental Humanities

SP - 64

EP - 83

BT - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities

A2 - Frawley, Jodi

A2 - McCalman, Ian

PB - Routledge

Y2 - 18 June 2012 through 19 June 2012

ER -