Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature

A field guide can help us re-attune ourselves to the new nature by teaching us how to notice, name, and appreciate more-than-human worlds. It shifts attention away from knowledge extractive practices of globalization and encourages skilled observers to pursue their commitments to place, social justice, and multispecies community.

Format: Hardback
Length: 344 pages
Publication date: 07 May 2024
Publisher: Stanford University Press

Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis,leading readers through a series of sites,thought experiments,and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice,name,and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation—getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics—are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding,and ways of living through,the epoch that human activity has ushered in. This Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis,leading readers through a series of sites,thought experiments,and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice,name,and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation—getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics—are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding,and ways of living through,the epoch that human activity has ushered in.
Nature has gone feral, and we need to re-attune ourselves to the new nature. A field guide can help us do this. The global scientific community recently ruled the Anthropocene, an era many date to the Industrial Revolution when human action truly began to transform the planet. However, understanding the nature of human transformation of the Earth is more important than ever. The effects of human activity are global in scope, but take shape within distinct social and ecological patches, discontinuous regions within which the key actors may not be human, but the plants, animals, fungi, viruses, plastics, and chemicals creating our new world. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis, leading readers through a series of sites, thought experiments, and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice, name, and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation—getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics—are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding and ways of living through the epoch that human activity has ushered in. This Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis, leading readers through a series of sites, thought experiments, and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice, name, and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation—getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics—are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding and ways of living through the epoch that human activity has ushered in.

Weight: 688g
Dimension: 162 x 237 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503637320