UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Making Futures in End Times: Rethinking Nature Conservation in the Anthropocene

Breithoff, E; Harrison, R; (2020) Making Futures in End Times: Rethinking Nature Conservation in the Anthropocene. In: Harrison, R and Sterling, C, (eds.) Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene. (pp. 155-187). Open Humanities Press: London, UK. Green open access

[thumbnail of Breithoff and Harrison.pdf]
Preview
Text
Breithoff and Harrison.pdf - Published Version

Download (10MB) | Preview

Abstract

The question we ask here is what does it mean to conserve ‘nature’ in the Anthropocene, or what Marris (2013) has termed a ‘post-wild world’? The aim of this chapter is to explore some of the distinctive ways in which scientists and conservationists are responding to these challenges and how we might critically investigate the socio-cultural work which surrounds such efforts before returning to some of the ways in which the recognition of the Anthropocene as the age of humans both troubles and is troubled by such efforts. Working across natural and cultural heritage, our work is informed by observations of the ways in which research in what we might call ‘the climate change era’ forces a dissolution of the distinction between natural and cultural history (Chakrabarty 2009). Here we intersect with a new critical engagement with nature conservation (e.g. Benson 2010; Lorimer 2015) and extinction studies (e.g. Bird Rose 2013; Heise 2016; van Dooren 2016; Bird Rose, van Dooren and Chrulew 2017) in exploring the distinct social and cultural frameworks which produce ‘natural heritage’, and the ways in which ‘cultural heritage’ is not outside of, but integrally a part of them (e.g. Harrison 2015; DeSilvey 2017). Our work also connects both conceptually and empirically with recent anthropological engagements with ‘futures’ (e.g. Appadurai 2013; Salazar et al. 2017; Harrison et al. 2020), and with current creative academic engagements with global climatological and environmental change (e.g. Haraway 2016; Tsing 2015; Tsing et al. 2017) and the multiple worldings (cf. Barad 2007; de la Cadena and Blaser 2018; Omura et al. 2018; for heritage see Breithoff 2020) of their entangled conservation practices.

Type: Book chapter
Title: Making Futures in End Times: Rethinking Nature Conservation in the Anthropocene
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/de...
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access book, licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike license.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology > Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10106871
Downloads since deposit
49Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item