ABSTRACT
What is most remarkable about the Anthropocene is the way a concept derived from geology has entered the realm of social sciences. It is certainly not the first concept to cross over from natural to social sciences: adaptation, a key issue in the climate negotiations, is derived from biology, after all. But what sets the Anthropocene apart is that it might well have a life of its own among the social sciences. Even if the International Commission on Stratigraphy decides that we have not yet entered the Anthropocene, the term is likely to remain a useful one in social sciences, for the Anthropocene is now as much a political statement as a geological epoch. And it is a statement well suited to social sciences: the world, which was traditionally conceived as the social and political organ of the Earth, can no longer be thought separately from the Earth. Both the world and the Earth need to be thought of as one global system – a concept dear to James Lovelock and Gaia.
