The Anthropocene can be understood as a crisis of blame: it is not only a geological era but also a political zeitgeist in which the marks of human agency and culpability can be perceived nearly everywhere. Treating global climate change as a metonym for this predicament, I show how life in the Anthropocene reconfigures blame in four ways: it invites ubiquitous blame, ubiquitous blamelessness, selective blame, and partial blame. I review case studies from around the world, investigating which climate change blame narratives actors select, why, and with what consequences. Climate change blame can lead to scapegoating and buck-passing but also to their opposites. Given that the same ethical stance may lead to radically different consequences in different situations, the nobleness or ignobleness of an Anthropocene blame narrative is not a property of the narrative itself, but of the way in which actors deploy it in particular times and places.
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Debate
Religion and Environmental Apocalypse
Anna Fedele, Peter Rudiak-Gould, Terry Leahy and Stefan Skrimshire
The year 2012 has been at the center of many millennial theories, commonly referred to under the umbrella term the “2012 phenomenon”. Th ese theories, which predicted important changes for humanity usually related to some kind of environmental apocalypse, are generally described as relating to the end of the Mayan calendar, to the common-era calendar date, 21 December 2012 (21.12.2012), and to “New Age interpretations”.
SherriLynn Colby-Bottel, Joshua Reno, Tal Liron, Genevieve Lakier, Andrew Tarter, Adam Henne, Joseph Doyle Hankins, Peter Rudiak-Gould, Sharla Blank, J. Stephen Lansing, Alaka Wali, John Wagner, David Zurick, Robert Fletcher and Brian Grabbatin
BUTTON, Gregory, Disaster Culture: Knowledge and Uncertainty in the Wake of Human and Environmental Catastrophe
FALASCA-ZAMPONI, Simonetta, Waste and Consumption: Capitalism, the Environment, and the Life of Things
FIJN, Natasha, Living with Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia
GUNERATNE, Arjun, ed., Culture and the Environment in the Himalaya
HASTRUP, Frida, Weathering the World: Recovery in the Wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village
JOHNSTON, Barbara Rose, ed., Life and Death Matters: Human Rights, Environment and Social Justice
KIRBY, Peter Wynn, Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan
MCADAM, Jane. ed., Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
MENZIES, Charles R., Red Flags and Lace Coiff es: Identity and Survival in a Breton Village
MORAN, Emilio F., Environmental Social Science: Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability
NEWING, Helen, Conducting Research in Conservation: A Social Science Perspective
PARR, Joy, Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953–2003
RADEMACHER, Anne M., Reigning the River: Urban Ecologies and Political Transformation in Kathmandu
RUTHERFORD, Stephanie, Governing the Wild: Ecotours of Power
WALKER, Peter A. and Patrick T. HURLEY, Planning Paradise: Politics and Visioning of Land Use in Oregon