Chapter Two | Epochs of domination and liberation: expanding students’ understanding of human–environment relationships in the service of environmental justice | David Pellow

Epochs of domination and liberation: expanding students’ understanding of
human–environment relationships in the service of environmental justice

David Pellow

PROJECT SUMMARY

This chapter presents a classroom project that invites students to learn about and engage in creative, imaginative discussions of current and future environmental and climate epochs, which promotes a deepening of students’ skills for understanding, critiquing, and applying important theoretical frameworks concerning human–environment relationships. Specifically, the exercise asks students to think through the pros and cons of key frameworks and to propose their own frameworks that might more effectively and accurately capture the most important social and ecological dynamics of our time and of possible futures. The suggested readings offer students the opportunity to develop a basic scientific grasp of these major scholarly ideas and debates, as well as an engagement with conceptual tools emerging from the environmental social sciences and environmental humanities focused on these frameworks.

Instructors should randomly assign students to groups of three or more. Since everyone is going to be grappling with the same questions, what matters most is that students are working with peers who have diverse perspectives and who are open to a range of creative approaches. Students will need to have done the preparatory work of engaging the readings beforehand, so they are familiar with the concepts, theories, and frameworks. But it is always helpful for the instructor to offer a brief overview to ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of the ideas they will be working with (see below for more on this). Additionally or alternatively, students might be asked to present summaries of key readings and share motivating questions with the class. In this way, each student is responsible for offering a critical component of the entire group’s effort (also known as a “jigsaw” method of learning).

I have used this exercise in my upper-division undergraduate course on Building Sustainable Communities, but it would also work very well in a range of other class settings, including Environmental Justice, Environment and Society, Environmental Politics, and Climate Change Science and Politics. The students will have a lot of fun with this exercise because it quickly tran- sitions from the more structured, formal terrain of focusing on theories, concepts, and frameworks to a space in which they become the theorists, critics, and authors of their own ideas and imagined futures. In that way, there is a nice build-up from a point at which they are listening to the instructor’s recap of the frameworks to a moment in which they actively step into the roles of scholars and change makers.

Instructors can complete this exercise in a single session, depending on the time frame (e.g., my class was 75 minutes in length, so a 50-minute class might be too short); but one could definitely stretch it over two class periods, as long as there is consistency of membership within and across the student working groups.

This chapter is organized as follows. I first summarize the exercise’s core learning objectives. The focus of my particular course is a mix of theory and case studies, with a strong emphasis on justice and equity, but I am certain that this exercise is completely adaptable to a range of other curricular approaches and topical areas. I then provide a list of suggested reading materials to prepare students for fully participating in the exercise. These readings include primarily academic treatments of the topic that are accessible to most undergraduate students. The readings present substantial definitional material, background and context, and debates around key concerns that have emerged and evolved in conversations among scholars across a range of disciplines. The fields in which these frameworks are being debated are interdisciplinary and, to a large degree, changing at a fairly rapid pace, so I have tried to suggest foundational works as well as more recent and ambitious writings that seek to extend and challenge those earlier ideas. I then provide key background information for the instructors that explains what I believe are the most significant points associated with each epochal framework. This section is intended both to be “Cliff Notes” for instructors who may not be very familiar with these frameworks and to offer more advanced engagements, so it is written in plain language with key takeaways for priming the students’ interests and creative, critical thinking. I conclude the chapter with some observations and reflections on challenges one might face while leading students in this exercise, and on what I believe are some of the most effective ways to address those challenges and to increase the probability of a successful outcome.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand and be conversant in key scholarly frameworks concerning our present socioecological epoch.
Offer critical assessments of the explanatory power of concepts and theories concerning our present socioecological epoch.
Produce a distinct and unique framework to describe our present socioecological epoch.
Offer a distinct and unique framework to describe a future socioecological epoch.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING

Armiero, M. (2021). The case for the Wasteocene. Environmental History, 26(3), 425–430.
Crutzen, P. J. (2006). The “Anthropocene.” In E. Ehlers & T. Krafft (eds.), Earth System Science in the Anthropocene (pp. 13–18). Springer.
Crutzen, P. J. (2016). Geology of mankind. In H. G. Brauch & P. J. Crutzen (eds.), Paul J. Crutzen: A Pioneer on Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change in the Anthropocene (pp. 211–215). Springer.
Davis, J., Moulton, A. A., Van Sant, L., & Williams, B. (2019). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene? A manifesto for ecological justice in an age of global crises. Geography Compass, 13(5), e12438.
Moore, J. W. (ed.). (2016). Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. PM Press.

ONLINE MULTIMEDIA BACKGROUND MATERIALS

What Is the Anthropocene? (n.d.). Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/science/what-is-the-anthropocene/ invites viewers to discover why scientists think we are in a new geologic age and what it means for our future.
Humanity’s Epoch: ANTHROPOCENE. (2013, February 12). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfDm7rM9_-8. In collab- oration with Elementa: Embracing the concept that basic knowledge can foster sustainable solutions for society.
The Anthropocene Project. (n.d.). Edward Burtynsky. https://www .edwardburtynsky.com/projects/the-anthropocene-project: a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influences on the current health and future of the Earth.
Entitle Blog. (2016, January 4). Jason W. Moore: Anthropocene or Capitalocene? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= q1YZym_abPU. Sociologist Jason W. Moore speaks about why the Anthropocene is perhaps better conceptualized as the Capitalocene.
Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble.” (2014, May 9) [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/ 97663518P. Professor Donna Haraway delivers a lecture on why the Chthulucene is a generative way of thinking about the current socioeco- logical epoch.
Center for 21st Century Studies. (2019, September 12). Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing: “Unblocking Attachment Sites for Living in the Plantationocene.” (April 17, 2019) [Video]. YouTube. https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=wbQmtPI25lI. Haraway and Tsing lead a discussion at the Center for 21st Century Studies (UW-Milwaukee) on April 17, 2019.

ISSUE BACKGROUND: WHAT ARE SOCIOECOLOGICAL EPOCHS AND WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?

The Industrial Revolution in Europe and the U.S.—which began in the 18th century and lasted until the middle of the 19th century—was marked by the invention of the steam engine and a broader transition in economic activity from hand-made to machine-made production, which also involved an increase in the use of chemicals for manufacturing goods. This historic change in the ways the European and U.S. economies functioned ushered in significant transformations of the human–environment relationship, which impacted people and ecosystems around the globe. Ecologist Eugene Stoermer and atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen proposed and popularized the term “Anthropocene” to describe these extraordinary changes occurring around the world (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Crutzen, 2002). This term is the name that scholars use to describe the current geological epoch, in which humans are the dominant influence on planet Earth’s climate and environment. This epoch is characterized by colossal changes to the climate and biosphere, the ushering in of the sixth mass extinction of flora and fauna, and the large-scale translocation of nonhuman species across the globe by humans (Williams et al., 2015). These dynamics have resulted in “human-driven chemical, physical, and biological changes to the Earth’s atmosphere, land surface, and oceans” (Zalasiewicz, Williams, and Waters, 2016: 14) unlike anything seen before in human history. The Anthropocene framework is now firmly entrenched in the biogeochemical sciences, the environmental arts and humanities, and the environmental social sciences. For the first time, humans as a species have become an agent of geological change—meaning that the impacts of our activities are being felt across time and space in ways that are enormous in scale and temporally permanent.

While the Anthropocene is extremely useful for describing the importance and impacts of human activity on planet Earth, a number of scholars have rightly pointed out that there is an implicit message contained within that framework that assumes that all humans are roughly equally responsible for those impacts. Any casual examination of the data on consumption, pollution, and greenhouse gas generation, however, reveals quite clearly that there are major differences across nations and racial and social class groups, among other categories. Specifically, wealthier and whiter nations, communities, and individuals are responsible for the vast majority of carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions that have contributed to anthropogenic climate change; while Global South communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color have to date perpetrated far less of those harms. And yet, it is precisely the populations that have contributed the least to global climate disruptions that have suffered the most from the ravages of climate change—hence the term “climate injustice” (for more on climate justice see Kashwan, this volume). More specifically, there are particular systems of economic activity that bear a greater responsibility for ecological harms than others, and that is why scholars have focused on the role of capitalism. Accordingly, a number of scholars have called this present epoch the “Capitalocene” (Haraway, 2015; Moore, 2016, 2017) to underscore that, contrary to the Anthropocene’s view that all humans are responsible for the anti-ecological trends we can observe today, the system of capitalism is in fact more properly named as the dominant influence on planet Earth’s environment, climate, and humanity. These scholars offer a critique of the Anthropocene by naming capitalism as the cause of our crises in order to articulate the view that all humans are not responsible for climate disruptions, and certainly not all are equally responsible. The Capitalocene “signifies capitalism as a way of organizing nature—as a multispecies, situated, capitalist world-ecology” (Moore, 2016: 6). Of course, many environmentalists have argued that phasing out fossil fuels is the most effective means of addressing the scourge of global climate change. However, the “Capitalocene” framework takes the position that capitalism is a matrix of longstanding institutions and processes that have caused ecological disruptions; and while capitalism is certainly supported by fossil fuel extraction and consumption (which are the leading contributors to climate disruption), these scholars contend that if we are not focused on those broader networks of organizations and structures that constitute capitalism, then we run the risk of narrowly focusing on a symptom rather than the underlying cause of our socioecological crisis. Thus the “Capitalocene” is meant to offer an opposing view to the “era of humans” (Anthropocene) framework, to instead argue that we are living in the “era of capital” and that is the most significant fact of current human–environment relationships, tensions, and possibilities.

The “Wasteocene” is a framework that is meant to be a feature within the Capitalocene that underscores several key ideas. First, the wide-scale production of toxins, pollution, and other forms of industrial waste are among the dominant characteristics of this present epoch. As Marco Armiero puts it, “the making of a toxic world is not an unwanted side effect of capitalism but, rather, its very way of functioning” (Armiero, 2021: 425). Second, the Wasteocene affirms the Capitalocene’s critique of the Anthropocene’s implicit view that we are all equally responsible for our ecological crises. Third, the Wasteocene puts forth a critique of some views of the Anthropocene that there are only villains or victims, and that there are few if any revolutionaries who can challenge and change this system. The Wasteocene emphatically embraces the fact that virtually everywhere on Earth where we find environmental and climate injustice, there are forms of resistance and revolutionary activity afoot, if we are attuned to it. But above all, the Wasteocene’s emphasis is on the ways in which the uneven and unjust power asymmetries within and across societies produce “wasting relationships” based on and rooted in othering, exploitation, abuse, and the siphoning of energy and wealth from marginalized human and nonhuman communities and ecosystems. Within this Wasteocene era, one of the most important and terrifying facts is that dominant institutions, organizations, and cultural practices routinely deploy the “power of classifying who and what is disposable and who and what is not” (Armiero, 2021: 425). Fortunately, those wasting relationships are frequently acknowledged, documented, and confronted by grassroots community-based environmental, climate, food, and social justice activists in neighborhoods, workplaces, and other sites around the world.

Like the Wasteocene, the Plantationocene is also a subcategory of the Capitalocene. This concept was first proposed by Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing to describe the fact that around the globe we see an extraordinary prevalence of industrial farms, pastures, and monocrop/monoculture forests that humans have created via low wage, indentured, exploited, and enslaved human and nonhuman labor (Haraway et al., 2016; Tsing, 2015). As Haraway (2015) puts it, a key characteristic of this epoch is the “devastating transformation of diverse kinds of human-tended farms, pastures, and forests into extractive and enclosed plantations, relying on slave labor and other forms of exploited, alienated, and usually spatially transported labor” (2015: 162). A number of scholars have embraced the Plantationocene, but have also insisted that Haraway’s initial formulation was seriously lacking in a deeper focus and attention to racism, white supremacy, and coloniality as central to the maintenance of the capitalist world system (Davis et al., 2019; Murphy and Schroering, 2020). Accordingly, these scholars strengthen and extend the Plantationocene’s explanatory power as way of describing our current epoch by integrating it with key ideas from the Black radical tradition, such as racial capitalism (Robinson, 1983 [2020]), which allows us to understand the plantation as a site of racialization and resistance by people of color against a global system of dominance that has ensnared vulnerable human and nonhuman populations in the service of a racially exclusive elite (Du Bois, 1935 [1998]; Pulido, 2017).

And while the above frameworks are among the most recognized and debated in the multidisciplinary field of environmental studies, numerous others abound, including the Racial Capitalocene (Vergès, 2017), the Anthrobscene (Parikka, 2015), the Technoscene (Hornborg, 2015), and the Chthulucene (Haraway, 2016). The point is that these are ideas and concepts that are deemed useful for thinking through the complex drivers, impacts, implications, and possibilities of major human–ecosystem frictions.

PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS: EPOCHS OF DOMINATION AND LIBERATION

This exercise begins with the instructor presenting the students with a short lecture outlining the main points associated with the four major frameworks referenced above that scholars have used to characterize the epoch in which we live—the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, the Wasteocene, and the Plantationocene. The mini-lecture usually takes around 20 minutes and is more effective if the students have done the background reading. The instructor then assigns students to small groups, where each member has been tasked with sharing summaries of and insights from the readings, thus creating a space in which full participation and collaboration are required to facilitate a collective understanding of the concepts. The instructor then invites each group to grapple with a series of questions (see below) that require them to engage those ideas and develop new frameworks that more directly reflect their desires and experiences. And while focused on a set of topics that is deadly serious (i.e., the fragile nature of human–ecosystem relationships), this exercise is always fun and elicits insightful, emotional, thoughtful, and playful responses and collaborations. This exercise facilitates student engagement with key ideas in environmental studies, while strengthening their capacity to become the authors of new ideas that can speak back to, critique, and extend existing scholarship.

Questions for Student Discussion

Which of the above four frameworks do you think most accurately describes our current epoch? Why? (10 minutes)

Come up with your own term that you think more accurately describes this current epoch. Why did you choose this term and what is its meaning? (10 minutes)
___?___ocene: Come up with your own term for a future geological epoch that you would like to live in, which would be characterized by environmental justice, climate justice, thriving democracies, and greater social equity (or any other socioecological characteristics you would like to see). What is the name of the epoch you would like to see and live in? Why did you choose this name? How might we work toward making that epoch become a reality? (15 minutes)

Report back and full class discussion (20 minutes)

Each breakout group gets an opportunity to present the results of their deliberations and the instructor writes the key words and terms on a black/white board or projected computer screen. The full class is invited to offer comments and feedback on each group’s conclusions.

Grading

Instructors can grade this exercise in a variety of ways. The method I use is simple and direct. Each student receives 1 class participation point for being present that day and 1 point for each question answered, so that the entire assignment ends up counting for the equivalent of an attendance point and a quiz grade (note: all of my quizzes are collective, group exercises where students work together to solve problems and answer questions).

REFLECTIONS ON ADDRESSING COMMON CHALLENGES

While I have never had a significant problem with students participating enthusiastically and substantively in this exercise, I always prepare for the possibility that common challenges might arise. These could include: students not fully engaging; some students taking up too much space in a small group; and the possibility that any discussion of socioecological frictions and relationships might trigger significant anxiety among students. The ways I address these concerns include ensuring that students are making space for everyone in the group to participate; and one method of achieving this is to assign a student moderator within each group, while instructing students to assist with creating an inclusive space for all of their peers to participate. I also briefly visit each small group and visibly listen and offer feedback during that time. I also let students know at the beginning of the exercise that while this project can be a lot of fun, it is also focused on a topic that can elicit emotional and anxious responses, so I encourage students to express those emotions rather than suppress them. I also invite students to feel comfortable leaving the room and getting some fresh air outside by taking in meditative breaths, if needed.

REFERENCES

Armiero, M. (2021). The case for the Wasteocene. Environmental History, 26(3), 425–430.

Crutzen, P. J. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415, 23.

Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2021). The “Anthropocene.” In S. Benner, G. Lax,

P. J. Crutzen, U. Pöschl, J. Lelieveld, & H. G. Brauch (eds.), Paul J. Crutzen and the Anthropocene: A New Epoch in Earth’s History (pp. 19–21). Springer.

Davis, J., Moulton, A. A., Van Sant, L., & Williams, B. (2019). Anthropocene, capitalocene, … plantationocene? A manifesto for ecological justice in an age of global crises. Geography Compass, 13(5), e12438.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 (3rd edn., 1998). The Free Press.

Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: making kin. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919–3615934.

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.

Haraway, D., Ishikawa, N., Gilbert, S. F., Olwig, K., Tsing, A. L., & Bubandt, N. (2016). Anthropologists are talking – about the Anthropocene. Ethnos, 81(3), 535–564. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00141844.2015.1105838.

Hornborg, A. (2015). The political ecology of the Technocene: uncovering ecologically unequal exchange in the world-system. In C. Hamilton, C. Bonneuil & F. Gemenne (eds.), The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis (pp. 57–69). Routledge.

Moore, J. W. (ed.). (2016). Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. PM Press.

Moore, J. W. (2017). The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(3), 594–630. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036.

Murphy, M. W., & Schroering, C. (2020). Refiguring the Plantationocene: racial capitalism, world-systems analysis, and global socioecological transformation. Journal of World-Systems Research, 26(2), 400–415. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2020.983. Parikka, J. (2014). The Anthrobscene. University of Minnesota Press.

Pulido, L. (2017). Geographies of race and ethnicity II: environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence. Progress in Human Geography, 41(4), 524–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516646495.

Robinson, C. J. (1983). Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (3rd edn, revised and updated, 2020). The University of North Carolina Press. Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press.

Vergès, F. (2017). Racial Capitalocene. In G. T. Johnson and A. Lubin (eds.), Futures of Black Radicalism (pp. 72–82). Verso Books.

Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J., Haff, P., Schwägerl, C., Barnosky, A. D., & Ellis, E. C. (2015). The Anthropocene biosphere. The Anthropocene Review, 2(3), 196–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019615591020.

Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., & Waters C. N. (2016). Anthropocene. In J. Adamson, W. Gleason & D. Pellow (eds.), Keywords for Environmental Studies (pp. 14–16). New York University Press.