ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of the Anthropocene for cosmopolitan thought. The idea of the Anthropocene has recently emerged to be not only a major development in the Earth Sciences, but it has also become influential in the human and social sciences. In the 1990s the idea of globalisation became one of the most important concepts in the social sciences. It led to a rethinking of the nature of sociology and led to much valuable research. In certain respects the challenge of globalisation has been diminished by recent perspectives. One of the hallmarks of modern sociology is the concern with making sense of major historical transformations. Classical sociology was deeply historical, but its approach always differed from that of the historian in that it sought to understand the specificity of the present time in terms of the totality of social relations and to view the past with a view to the future.
