A settler colonial anthropocene: Ruth A. Morgan, ‘A Pacific Anthropocene’, in James Beattie Ryan, Tucker Jones, Edward Dallam Melillo (eds), Migrant Ecologies: Environmental Histories of the Pacific World, Honolulu, University of Hawai’I Press, 2023, pp. 257-278. | settler colonial studies blog

A settler colonial anthropocene: Ruth A. Morgan, ‘A Pacific Anthropocene’, in James Beattie Ryan, Tucker Jones, Edward Dallam Melillo (eds), Migrant Ecologies: Environmental Histories of the Pacific World, Honolulu, University of Hawai’I Press, 2023, pp. 257-278.

17Apr24

Excerpt: That the Anthropocene is the product of historical processes has at-tracted environmental historians to its analysis. It is a concept that speaks to the very project of the field, that is, to show that all human history is en-vironmental. Their early engagements with the concept (and its critiques) focused on the intellectual history of the idea; questions of disciplinary expertise and authority regarding its definition; and representations of the Anthropocene in material culture and historical narratives; and have since turned to moral questions of historical responsibility and environmental justice. In this chapter, I open with a reflection on the contributions of settler Australian environmental historians in the articulation of the Anthropocene; I then situate this historiography in terms of the southwest Pacific and its peoples. Placing the Anthropocene in this way traces the connecting threads between the concept and its (uneven) materiality, recognizing the historical processes that have produced this moment and the material differences in its manifestation around the globe. Focusing on the southwest Pacific, as this chapter suggests, takes a regional approach to placing the Anthropocene that brings such material differences into sharp relief.

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