Oral Presentation Session

Reviewed by: Anthropology and Environment Society

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students

Primary Theme: Anthropocene

Secondary Theme: Resilience

(3-1040) (Un)Making the Anthropocene: Changing Environment, Emerging Anthropos, Agentive Imaginaries

The anthropocene becomes observable through the concrete experiences of human agents when the everyday enterprise of living is confronted with collapsing ecologies. In the midst of paralyzing uncertainty induced by environmental disasters, life is overshadowed by the prospect of becoming undone. Yet, to lead and remake life, humans harness creativity to take on the work of sensing, knowing, and doing, always entangled within ecological and social relations. New ways of being with human and non-human others are opened up, experimented with, contemplated, and altered. One may say anthropos are “emerging” in this sense. How do humans and non-humans carve out a place, a time, and relations that might gesture toward dreams of living more simply when the specter of ruins loom large? How do the small tasks of (un)making the anthropocene give tangible forms to emerging ecologies and futures? In what ways do cultural practices transform our attachment to the time and space of the anthropocene? In this panel, we call ethnographic attention to the effects, and affects, of environmental disasters by examining the situated practices to (un)make the world, however fragile they may be. What are the futures of Anthropos?

Discussant(s)

• Christine Folch

  Duke University

Chair(s)

• Ralph Litzinger

  Duke University

Organizer(s)

• Koffi Nomedji

  Duke University

Presenter(s)

• Koffi Nomedji

  Duke University

Organizer(s)

• Jieun Cho

  PhD Student
  Duke University

Presenter(s)

• Jieun Cho

  PhD Student
  Duke University

• Allison Caine

  PhD Candidate
  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Ashley Fent

  CFD Postdoctoral Fellow
  Vassar College

• Eben Kirksey

  Associate Professor
  Deakin University

Presentations:

• 4:15 PM - 4:30 PM

  The Politics of Coastal Erosion: Contrasting Case Studies from Togo and Ghana
  Koffi Amegbo Nomedji – Duke University
• 4:30 PM - 4:45 PM

  Radiation in Envelopes: Exposure and Disclosure at a Laboratory in Post-Meltdown Japan
  Jieun Cho – Duke University
• 4:45 PM - 5:00 PM

  Whistling to Hungry Sheep: Human-Animal Communication and Multispecies Modes of Evaluation in the Anthropocene
  Allison Caine – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• 5:00 PM - 5:15 PM

  Anticipating Socio-Ecological Futures in Coastal Casamance (Senegal)
  Ashley Fent – Vassar College
• 5:15 PM - 5:30 PM

  Remaking Life with Shenzhen Speed
  Eben Kirksey – Deakin University
• 5:30 PM - 5:45 PM

  Discussion
  Christine Folch – Duke University