Planetary Boundaries, Climate Change, and the Anthropocene

This chapter examines the ways that researchers in the environmental humanities and social sciences have understood, contested, and challenged the implications of the Earth System Science concepts of the Anthropocene and planetary boundaries. The chapter offers a reflection on the history and implications of planetary narratives, followed by an experiment with provincialising these narratives by drawing on case studies that focus on perspectives from First Nations and Global South scholarship. By foregrounding the visual iconography of a synoptic planetary consciousness, while acknowledging the corporeally grounded encounter of feeling and embodiment, the chapter contends that our planetary predicament behoves us to attempt to reconcile these views not only into a singular narrative of transformations to the Earth system, but instead to embrace the plural voices of the planet’s many places and peoples.