Trajectories of the Anthropocene as a boundary concept bridging debates about climate change and ecological collapse (years 2000–2019)

ABSTRACT

Since its first appearance, the concept of the Anthropocene has achieved remarkable success in terms of users and audiences, among both specialists and non-specialists alike. While not yet formalised in the geologic timescale, how has this notion spread so widely and quickly? Given the concept’s trajectories across different media spheres and over its first two decades of circulation, the Anthropocene notion has had four main uses: a ‘proving use’ employed for collecting evidence for the human epoch’s official recognition; a ‘questioning use’ for criticising its epistemological and political shortcomings; a ‘mentioning use’ when taking it for granted as a catchword; and a ‘metaphorical use’ for conveying the rising problem of global warming and ecological collapse. Regarding this last metaphorical use, the Anthropocene appears to act as a boundary concept bridging debates about climate change and aligning apocalyptic imaginaries of the future. The success of the Anthropocene concept might therefore be explained not by virtue of its intrinsic properties, unspecified virality and predetermined trajectory, but rather by the crystallisation and frequency of its use as a boundary concept. As such, it plays an evoking function in discursively introducing the whole semantic domain of the climate crisis condition and establishing the basis for talking about its apocalyptic consequences. Being used for unifying these narratives about the past and future of humankind and for capturing the variety of changes caused to the planet, the Anthropocene’s fields of circulation have thus enlarged vastly outside its geological debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropocene
• boundary concept
• climate change
• ecological collapse
• evoking function

Acknowledgements

We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback that strengthened the writing. We also express our gratitude to the journal editors for their support throughout the paper's development. Finally, we extend our sincere appreciation to Claudio Coletta for reviewing an early version of the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alessio Giacometti

Alessio Giacometti is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences: Communications, Interaction and Cultural Constructions at the University of Padova (Italy), working at the moment on a project about the sociotechnical imaginaries of nuclear fusion. He is interested in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Environmental Sociology, with a particular focus on the Anthropocene Studies, Environmental Humanities, political ecology, and social studies of energy transitions.

Paolo Giardullo

Paolo Giardullo is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Padova (Italy). He works at the intersection between Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Environmental Sociology, doing research on public communication of science and technology as well as on environmental issues through the media. Besides continuatively matching these scholarships, he currently works on digital data practices related to Citizen Science.