ABSTRACT
My contention in this chapter is that the notion of a universal humanity implicit within the term Anthropocene is a stumbling block to understanding both the true genesis of our human-made ecological catastrophe, as well as a full understanding of the human itself and its myriad variations. The discipline of anthropology, though in some ways a child of that humanist construction, offers us both crucial evidence against the essentialist and teleological conflation of agricultural civilization and humanity, as well as a vast variety of existent alternatives to that way of life. Contained within the ethnographic record are vastly differing notions of not only human liberty individually and societally, but additionally and crucially varying conceptions of that liberty in relation to the more-than-human world in which it is enmeshed. Thus, we can see our present situation as sociogenic and suitably term it what I offer as an alternative: the Civilicene. This recognition provides us with a view of humanity that is not universal, homogenous, and unchanging, allowing us to see possible futures of human–nature relations that are otherwise than the Civilicene and its denigration of the agency and liberty of both humans the rest of nature.
