Cultural Analysis in/of the Anthropocene

Abstract

Recalling George Marcus's influential writing "Ethnography In/Of the World System", this essay asks how cultural analysis needs to be conceptualized, practiced and infrastructured differently when it moves from a global to a planetary, late industrial frame. This contribution argues that "the Anthropocene" is usefully understood as a particular way of making environmental sense within late industrialism - what industrialism has become as it has cohered, aged, ossified, degraded and retrenched over time, in different ways in different settings. The essay calls for cultural analysis of the Anthropocene as a scientific concept, environmental dynamic, representational challenge and prompt to action in different settings. It also pleads for interdisciplinary collaboration (with cultural analysts in formative roles) and for investment in technical infrastructure to underpin the cultural analysis needed to go forward.