Search results for " Anthropocene"
showing 10 items of 20 documents
Managing the Historical Agricultural Landscape in the Sicilian Anthropocene Context. The Landscape of the Valley of the Temples as a Time Capsule
2021
The debate over whether we are entering the Anthropocene Epoch focuses on the unequal consumption of the Earth system’s resources at the expense of nature’s regenerative abilities. To find a new point of balance with nature, it is useful to look back in time to understand how the so-called “Great Acceleration”—the surge in the consumption of the planet’s resources—hastened the arrival of the Anthropocene. Some particular places—for various reasons—survived the Great Acceleration and, as time capsules, have preserved more or less intact some landscape features that have disappeared elsewhere. How can we enhance these living archives that have come down to us? Through the analysis of the case…
La vite ad alberello e il giardino pantesco. Dinamiche globali di patrimonializzazione culturale ed economia locale
2021
In questo breve contributo proverò a introdurre il ruolo e la simbologia dell'albero nella società pantesca contemporanea in una prospettiva antropologica. Sintetizzando alcune fasi della mia ricerca sul campo sull'isola di Pantelleria, ho tentato di comprendere le dinamiche che hanno portato ai riconoscimenti Unesco della pratica della vite ad alberello e dei muretti a secco, così come al riconoscimento del giardino pantesco, e le conseguenze da questi determinate nella vita socio-economica dell’isola di Pantelleria e nell’immaginario collettivo della comunità locale e dei vari soggetti implicati. Applicando varie metodologie di indagine (interviste, osservazione partecipante, consultazion…
An anthropic soil transformation fingerprinted by REY patterns
2009
Abstract This Focus article deals intentionally with modern soil disturbance in situ . This is of interest to archaeologists as after disturbances, both short- and long-term, pedogenesis (re-)starts obliterating previous signs. Soil modifications induced by human activity may be linked to pedogenetic evidence for disturbance with archaeological evidence for the cultural activities. We contrasted two 750-m 3 soil pedons, an Anthrosol and a Kastanozem, from which the Anthrosol is derived, using 77 descriptors of soil properties which have been utilized in archaeological studies (pedo-morphological, routine laboratory, biochemical, metals and rare earth elements plus yttrium, REY) with the aim…
Climate Change and the Challenges to Democracy
2018
This Article explores the uneasy interaction between climate change and democracy, particularly liberal democracy. Its central claim is that climate change and other problems of the Anthropocene—this new epoch into which no earthly entity, process, or system escapes the reach and influence of human activity—expose and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in democratic theory and practice, particularly in their currently dominant liberal form; and that both democracies’ failures and their most promising attempts at managing these problems expose democracies to significant legitimacy challenges
Climate Change, Liberalism, and the Public/Private Distinction
2021
In an earlier paper (Jamieson and Di Paola 2016) we explored the ways in which anthropogenic climate change and more generally the Anthropocene—this new epoch in which no earthly place, form, entity, process, or system escapes the reach of human activity—puts pressure on some central categories and concepts of liberal democratic theory. In this chapter we focus on one particular distinction that is at the heart of liberal theory: that between the public and the private (henceforth ‘the Distinction’). Our claim is that climate change puts pressure on the Distinction in ways that are difficult for liberals to relieve. Our purpose is not to write an obituary for liberalism, but to articulate s…
Soil is the best testifier of the diachronous dawn of the Anthropocene
2021
Humans act at worldwide scale as a growing geomorphic agent since mid‐Holocene (8,200–4,200 y BP) through the pervasive impacts of domestication, deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, and mining. The concept of Anthropocene has been introduced exactly to indicate the timespan in which humans have joined with other natural forces in impacting the outermost shell of the planet and the biosphere. Soils, which are the Earth's skin, are sensitive archives of any major human‐induced local to global change. Especially when buried, soils can permanently preserve the primordial traces of a significant impact of man on the environment, which occurred at different times and rates in different area…
Ethics and Politics of the Built Environment: Gardens of the Anthropocene
2017
This book is a reflection on the role of gardens in our thinking about our environments, and on the role of urban gardening in our acting and for our environments. More generally, it is an exploration of the ethical and political station of individuals in the Anthropocene - this new epoch in which the Earth is being remade by human activity. The book argues that, in the new epoch, urban gardens and gardening are to become 1) conceptual models for reflecting on the human station within the wider workings of things; 2) contexts and practices of stewardship that enable the fulfillment of individual moral obligations against important global challenges - including food security, climate change,…
Geografie del collasso. L'Antropocene in 9 parole chiave
2021
Covid-19 è il primo grande trauma collettivo dell’Antropocene, una catena di eventi materiali, culturali e sociali che stanno aggredendo il nostro immaginario con un impatto incalcolabile. Un effetto profondo della pandemia sarà costringere l’umanità al prossimo step cognitivo: l’accettazione della fine della pace climatica dell’Olocene. Abbiamo bisogno di tempo, ma il tempo a disposizione è poco. Negare il trauma, fare come l’erbivoro assalito dalla belva che si anestetizza per non vedere la fine è qualcosa che non possiamo permetterci. Dissoluzione degli ecosistemi terrestri, questione animale, mutamento climatico, inquinamento e dissesto demografico, diaspora, populismo, suprematismo, er…
GEOGRAFIA – Campo. Epistemologia. Immaginazione. Migrazioni. Paesaggio. Antropocene. Politica. Bibliografia
2020
Voce "Geografia" per l'Enciclopedia Treccani "Geography" entry for the Treccani Encyclopedia
Is the Anthropocene really worthy of a formal geologic definition?
2014
Scientists are actively debating whether the Anthropocene, the geologic time span (GTS) we are now living in, should be considered a period, epoch, or age in the geologic timescale. The solution is not easy, because the beginning of this GTS is undefined and the end unknown. In fact, there is no agreement on when the Anthropocene began, the proposed dates ranging from the Second World War, when radioactive fallout branded soils and sediments all over the world, to little after the end of the last glacial period, i.e. 11.7 thousand years ago, therefore coinciding with the onset of the Holocene. We are in favour of a concurrence of the Anthropocene with the Holocene, although a major impact …