Anthropocene Psychology describes the consequences of ‘being human in a more-than-human world’ - a process that is tangled with multi-species, multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary approaches, and with a priority on situated specifics.
Matthew Adams, coins the term ‘anthropocene psychology’, to describe the consequences of ‘being human in a more-than-human world’.
He adds this is
‘a process that is tangled with multi-species, multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary approaches, and with a priority on situated specifics. ‘ (p2).
The ‘situated specifics’ he carefully explores here include the tangles around the definition of the Anthropocene itself, the reporting and transmission of Pavlov’s experiments on dogs, the morals of eating other creatures, chicken farming, voluntary shepherding, dealing with ecocatastrophe from a Maori perspective, and the idea of ‘solastagia’. I felt informed and enriched by the variety of sources the author quotes from.
Psychology at its limits
What is less clear, and particularly relevant for CPA members, is what is ‘psychological’, or relates to ‘climate psychology’ about these explorations. If I understand it right, climate psychology retains the primacy of human reaction to the stimuli of climate change and its consequences. It appears Anthropocene psychology, if it is to be a thing, will posit these reactions as one part of a multi-species, cultural or anthropological gestalt.
This type of positioning might be driven by ethical, political and ecological considerations, could it be driven by psychological ones too? The most conventional ‘psychological’ discussion here concerns meat eating and the notion that refusal to acknowledge the cruelty and death of our dinners is a type of ‘cognitive dissonance’. Adams critiques this position as debateable, limited, and Westernised – (although the processes involved in cultures which include vegetarianism are not discussed).
In trying to create a novel academic discourse as part of an unfolding, environmental movement which questions the basis of academic disciplines, and indeed the ontology of discourse, what is left that can actually be generalised about? In other words how to move beyond the conventional academic distanced position – to Stay with the Trouble, as Adams says, borrowing from Donna Haraway (2016)?
Changing the subject
One of the many examples discussed in this part of the book is the BBC (2017) mockumentary Carnage (handily available on Iplayer) in which the comedian and vegan Simon Amstell looks back on the history of veganism and the end of animal farming from the vantage point of an imaginary future. Adams’ ‘take’ on the work is that Amstell uses the form of the ‘mockumentary’ to surprise our sense of normality and to make political points indirectly and powerfully. He, it seems, ‘stays with the trouble’, and by directing his humour at his own fantasies as well, makes a political utopia seem more real. I think this is a point well made – that we need to change perspective to move on from the Anthropocene. But how can an academic discipline contribute to this?
For example, Adams traces the development of the concept of solastalgia, notes it’s largely disengaged and solipsistic connotations, and then critiques the concept from the points of view of Native peoples who have, of course, been dealing with Anthropocene loss of place for much longer, and have developed ways of understanding it as an active process (he discusses the Maori concept of tangui, as a culturally sensitive alternative). He concludes by suggesting that the sense of connection which people feel to places can be seen as an ‘unconditional allegiance’ necessary for identity to exist, and he then takes this idea forward in a discussion about the granting of rights to those places in recognition
In this discussion Adams flirts with the idea of ‘reciprocal relationality’ which is close to the object-orientated ontology which inspires Timothy Morton (2010), and seems, to me, a necessary complement to a multi-perspective valuing process. I’d have liked to have heard more about this and the other philosophical conceptualisations (for example Nagel 2001; Deleuze & Guattari 1988; Irigaray & Marder 2016) which might give grounding for a new type of decentred understanding of being which is felt or enacted rather than merely observed.
Seeing in new ways
I'd like to end with a rather lengthy quotation which gives both a sense of the style and scope of the book, which I feel is well applied to his themes, but also maybe gives a sense of what I find is missing.
To accept the Anthropocene as invitation, we must recognise and help articulate deeply felt losses as a starting point for action, but we can also strive, however awkwardly and imperfectly, to break out of the explanatory models that have for so long held ‘nature’ as an inert and malleable backdrop to a human drama, and embrace and develop a more lively, animated narrative of reciprocal relationality. This requires ‘two-eyed seeing’: ‘to learn from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of western knowledges and ways of knowing’ (Arsenault, 2018); ‘not integrating, but weaving knowledges so that each way of seeing maintains its own integrity, while enhancing perspective and broadening understanding’ (Diver et al., 2019, p. 4). (Adams pp. 135-136)
What I feel needs to be added, whether to establish a discipline or to engage an active reader, is something which contends – that could provide options for action as well as knowledge. For example, the position that Haraway offers at the end of her discussion on eating animals (2008), which Adams quotes - of ‘killing without making killable’, that is taking responsibility for eating a subject - opens up a new set of debates on ethics and politics. If Anthropocene psychology can include these kinds of speculations, then I'm in.
References
Arsenault, R. et al. (2018). Shifting the framework of Canadian water governance through Indigenous research methods – acknowledging the past with an eye to the future. Water 10(1);49
BBC (2017) Amstell, Simon. Carnage. Accessed - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04sh6zg/simon-amstell-carnage
Deleuze, G. & Guattari,F. (1988) A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Diver, S. et al. (2019) Recognising ‘reciprocal relations’ to restore community access to land and water. International Journal of the Commons 13(1)
Haraway, D.J. (2008) When Species Meet
Haraway, D.J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
Irigaray L and Marder, M. (2016) Through Vegetal Being – Two Philosophical Perspectives
Nagel T. (2001) Panpsychism
Morton, T. (2010) The Ecological Thought
Reviewed by Ewan Davidson