Ideologies of the Anthropocene:

What we are talking about when we talk about the Anthropocene.

The concept of the Anthropocene is meant to express the belief that human activity has so overwhelmed the forces of nature that we should consider ourselves to be living in a new and different sort of geologic epoch. Debates over if and when we entered the Anthropocene encompass fundamental questions and assumptions about humans’ relationships to the environment and to each other. This talk will examine what is at stake in this debate and why it is seen as having far reaching ecological, political, economic, and social consequences. 

BIO

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology, Barnard College and Columbia University. Chair, Barnard Anthropology. Editor, Environment and Society

J.C. Salyer is an anthropologist and a lawyer whose work focuses on law and society, immigration law, and social justice. He is a term assistant professor of practice in the Department of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the co-principle investigator on a project funded by the National Science Foundation to examine the Australian immigration policy of placing asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat in a detention camp on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The project considers the intersections of ideas regarding sovereignty, human rights, post-coloniality, and law in an area of the South Pacific, which will face increasing population mobility over the coming decades in part due to climate change. His teaching focuses on the relationship between social science, law, human rights, and public policy. He is also the staff attorney for the Arab-American Family Support Center, a community-based organization in Brooklyn, and runs the organization’s immigration clinic. 

 

8:30 PM @ flute gramercy

 

*Entrance over 21