Contingencies of the anthropocene: Lessons from the ‘Neolithic’

Abstract

The emerging Anthropocene concept contains two conceptual challenges: its developing narrative tends to present a teleological view of history as linear and deterministic, which is at odds with evidence of evolutionary and historical contingency; and the species category at its core sits uneasily with both the causal details of historical changes and the complexity of conceptualizing human-nature relations. We can learn from the ways similar challenges have been dealt with in the long debate over the origins of agriculture. A body of critical and empirical scholarship now conceptualizes agriculture in more dynamic, contingent terms, but has dealt less well with the second, more difficult, ch..