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Doing Interdisciplinary Asian Studies in the Age of the Anthropocene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Kavita Philip
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In Bangalore, late in the summer of 2014, I listened to many animated conversations. There were political debates: the right-wing Hindu nationalist party had, earlier that summer, won national as well as state elections, evoking disparate reactions across society, sowing dissension even among the technological elite. There were technological arguments: should Bangalore continue to be an outsourcing haven for software services, or did India need a new model of development? Technology itself no longer seemed to unite people and offer exciting futures, as it had a decade ago. In Basavanagudi, a neighborhood named after twelfth-century social reformer Basavanna, part of the South Bangalore constituency where Tom Friedman's friend Nandan Nilekani had just lost the local election to the Hindu nationalist BJP candidate, I noticed a growing buzz around a social media campaign for a new documentary on climate change. Facebook, Twitter, and chats excitedly shared news of the upcoming global release of a film seeking to unite the globe in a social movement to stop climate change. Software engineers and social justice activists might, it seemed, be able to come together on this topic, if not any other.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 975 - 987
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2014 

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References

1 By opening with this anecdote, I do not wish to imply essentialized distinctions between Bangalore and California audiences. I did not conduct social-scientific research on these audiences, nor do I suggest that my initial observations capture the diversity of views they may be included under their seemingly homogenous group responses. Nor do I offer my own responses to Disruption. I use others' responses as a provocation to reflect on the ways in which discussions about climate change tend to differ in the places I most often inhabit, California and South India. Scholars of Asia travel to places with which most American students have little direct experience. We can draw on our travel experiences when we return to our classrooms. It is worth noting, of course, that geographic location, race, class, and age are some of the variables that shape people's attitudes toward environmentalism, climate change, and social justice, but demographic variables do not determine political outcomes. For more rigorous claims, I turn later in this essay to empirically documented scientific studies and historical scholarship.

2 Burke, Edmund and Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Environment and World History (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar, xi.

3 Id., xii. Here Burke is discussing a point originally made by Paul Sutter. See Sutter, Paul, “Reflections: What Can U.S. Environmental Historians Learn from Non-environmental Historiography?” Environmental History 8, no. 1 (2003): 109–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Burke and Pomeranz, op. cit. note 2, xii.

5 This is considered the first naming of the Anthropocene Age; see Crutzen, Paul and Stoermer, E. F., “The ‘Anthropocene,’” Global Change Newsletter 41 (2000): 17–18Google Scholar. In a historically specific paragraph, Crutzen and Stoermer date the Anthropocene to the industrial era:

We propose the latter part of the 18th century, . . . [although] some may even want to include the entire holocene. . . . We choose this date because, during the past two centuries, the global effects of human activities have become clearly noticeable. This is the period when data retrieved from glacial ice cores show the beginning of a growth in the atmospheric concentrations of several “greenhouse gases”, in particular CO2 and CH4. Such a starting date also coincides with James Watt's invention of the steam engine in 1784. (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000, 17–18)

The naming of the industrial era as the beginning of the Anthropocene Age is a scientific periodization that brings together the analytical and experimental narratives of planetary sustainability and historical narratives of industrialization and expansion.

6 “Planet of the Year: What on Earth Are We Doing?” Time, January 2, 1989.

7 Brown, Lester R. et al. , eds., State of the World, 1987: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress toward a Sustainable Society (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1987).Google Scholar

8 United Nations, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, 1987, http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf (accessed September 14, 2014), para. 102.

9 See, e.g., Philip, Kavita, “STS and Indigenous Knowledge,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (London: Elsevier, forthcoming).Google Scholar

10 John Tyndall, n.d., quoted at “Who Was John Tyndall?” Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/About/Who-was-John-Tyndall (accessed September 14, 2014).

11 “Professor Tyndall in Albemarle Street,” in Yates, Edmund Hodgson, Celebrities at Home, Reprinted from ‘The World’ (London: Office of ‘The World’, 1877)Google Scholar, 127. Available at https://archive.org/stream/celebritiesathom02yate#page/n5/mode/2up (accessed June 1, 2014).

12 “The Tyndall Dinner; Honors to Our Distinguished Visitor a Notable Gathering of Scientific and Prominent Men,” New York Times, February 5, 1873. New York Times Archive for 1872–73, timesmachine.nytimes.com (accessed June 1, 2014).

13 Environmental Pollution Panel, President's Science Advisory Committee, Restoring the Quality of Our Environment (Washington, D.C.: The White House, 1965)Google Scholar, 126.

14 Id., 113.

15 Between 1945 and 1960, thirty-six new Asian and African states achieved autonomy or independence from European colonization, according to U.S. State Department records, which note: “The newly independent nations that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s became an important factor in changing the balance of power within the United Nations.” U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Milestones: 1945–1952: Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960,” http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asia-and-africa (accessed September 14, 2014).

16 Sari, Agus P. et al. , Executive Summary: Indonesia and Climate Change: Working Paper on Current Status and Policies (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank: Department for International Development, 2007)Google Scholar, 1.

17 Grubb, Michael, “Durban: The Darkest Hour?” Climate Policy 11, no. 6 (2011): 1269–71, doi:10.1080/14693062.2011.628786CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 1269.

18 Id.

19 Id.

20 See Thompson, Edward P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966)Google Scholar; Rowbotham, Sheila, “Women and Utopia,” Modene Sprak: Journal of English, German, French and Spanish Language, Literature and Culture 1, no. 1 (2006): 55–63Google Scholar; Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Bullard, Robert, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Gadgil, Madhav, “Social Restraints on Resource Utilization: The Indian Experience,” in Culture and Conservation: The Human Dimension in Environmental Planning, ed. Pitt, D. (Dublin: Tycooly, 1985).Google Scholar

21 See, e.g., Harvey, David, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996)Google Scholar; Jamison, Andrew, “Climate Change Knowledge and Social Movement Theory,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1, no. 6 (2010)Google Scholar; Cohen, Daniel Aldana, “A Most People's Climate Movement?” NACLA Report on the Americas 46, no. 1 (April 2013): 50–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the websites of social movements related to climate justice, e.g., Brown & Green (http://www.brownandgreen.org, accessed September 14, 2014; and Climate & Capitalism (climateandcapitalism.com, accessed September 14, 2014), which includes a section on Asia with essays on China, Nepal, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India.

22 In his article on climate, Dipesh Chakrabarty's Thesis 1 is: “Anthropogenic Explanations of Climate Change Spell the Collapse of the Age-old Humanist Distinction between Natural History and Human History: Philosophers and students of history have often displayed a conscious tendency to separate human history . . . from natural history.” Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 201. Philosophers and historians of science do not seem to be included among the categories of philosophers and historians here. They have long questioned this “age old” humanist dichotomy. Anthropologists, similarly, have brought attention to the mythical constructions of this binary.

23 John Tyndall, cited in “John Tyndall: Irish Physicist, Naturalist, and Educator,” The Athanaeum: Science History and Biography, http://lexicorps.com/tyndall.htm (accessed June 1, 2014).

24 This is one of many letters in “the words of real scientists,” in response to science blogger Joe Duggan's question about how they “felt” about climate change. Joe Duggan, “The Scientists,” Is This How You Feel? http://isthishowyoufeel.weebly.com/this-is-how-scientists-feel.html (accessed August 25, 2014).