In this theoretical study, I apply a historiographical approach to examine the development of the Anthropocene as a concept and its use across disciplines and through time. Using a synthesis of the literature of the Anthropocene, I uncover eight “hidden” narratives that are embedded within its discourse, and further link these to European humanist thought and the creation of subject and Other. I use these narratives to inform my intersectional analysis, wherein subjects are formed through the interplay between identity construction, symbolic representations, and social structures. These levels provide a framework with which to examine subject formation, with a special focus on the dimensions of coloniality, class, gender, and race within the discourse of the Anthropocene. By applying an intersectional perspective, I discuss who the subjects of the Anthropocene are presented as and how they are created. Finally, I apply posthuman perspectives to discuss how and why subject formation must be made more complex. I argue that subject formation in the Anthropocene must better adhere to relationalities between humans – as well as between humans and the more-than- human world – if we are to effectively envision alternative trajectories away from the current ecological and social crises that define this time of environmental change.  The main contributions of this study are thus: (1) a review and synthesis of literature on the Anthropocene, (2) an identification of eight narratives that are embedded in the discourse surrounding the term, and (3) an analysis that applies intersectional and posthuman perspectives to subject formation within the discourse of the Anthropocene.

This thesis explores the concept of ‘feral’ while speculating possible futures of more-than-human interactions in urban environments. Feral in this project is described as living and non-living entities that are uncontrollable, unintentional, situated and dethatched from humans. The aim of this thesis to implement more-than-human theory and concepts into design practice to expand the design space of non-anthropocentric design. A speculative design approach is used to question and alter the status quo of power relations within more-than-human interactions through its experimental and critical nature (Bardzell, Bardzell and Koefoed Hansen, 2015; Dunne and Raby, 2013). Further, a series of methods, approaches and speculative fabulations (Haraway, 2016) are proposed that tell stories of possible worlds and act as a catalyst for moving more-than-human theory beyond concepts towards design practice.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the polluted Great Lakes became a central focus of the North American environmental movement. A majority of this pollution stemmed from phosphate-based laundry detergent use, which had become the primary product households used to wash fabrics after World War II. The large volume of phosphorus in these detergents discharged into the lakes caused excess growths of algae to form in waterways, which turned green and smelly. As the algae died off, it reduced the oxygen in the water, making it less habitable for fish and other aquatic life, a process known as eutrophication. As primary consumers of laundry detergents during the time period, women, particularly white, middle-class housewives in the United States and Canada, became involved in state/provincial, national, and international discussions involving ecology, water pollution, and sewage treatment alongside scientists, politicians, and government officials. Their work as volunteers, activists, and lobbyists influencing the debate and ensuing policies on how best to abate this type of pollution, known as eutrophication, has often been ignored. This thesis recognizes the work women completed encouraging the enactment of key water quality regulations and popularizing the basic tenets of environmentally-conscious consumption practices during the environmental movement in the early 1970s.

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This paper examines the relationship between the sublime and the Anthropocene, the period in earth’s geological history characterized by human impact upon the planet. As the genre of Anthropocene fiction, or climate fiction, has emerged in recent years, difficulties in defining the new genre as well as identifying useful tropes and forms within cli-fi novels has given rise to several proposed methods of understanding the Anthropocene. This essay examines the problems posed within Anthropocene fiction as well as the history of the concept of the sublime before examining Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation to find evidence of the relevance of the sublime within the Anthropocene.

This thesis investigates how the United Nations’ (UN) framing of “climate refugees” impacts global humanitarian migration and refugee governance in the context of anthropogenic climate change in which border zones become spaces of biopolitical decision making which impacts both governance strategies and International Relations as an academic field. It argues from a poststructuralist perspective that the UN’s discourse centred around climate change related human movement, the issue of “climate refugees” is downplayed, and “climate refugees” become bare life while their claims to legal protection are delegitimised. Thus, despite the concept of “climate refugees” becoming increasingly important in the Anthropocene, the UN’s discourse has remained vastly unchanged since McNamara’s analysis of it in 2007. The UN’s governance related discourse and reasoning concerning “climate refugees” and (humanitarian) global governance is explored through a Critical Discourse Analysis that examines a set of official UN documents which are relevant to the issue of forced human movement in the context of anthropogenic climate change.

This thesis explores the dimensions of an emerging design space in the Anthropocene through a design process that embraces Probology as a method to integrate interdisciplinary research in exploring and implementing solutions to the dissociation of urbanites from Earth’s ecological community.

In this dissertation I think-with figures of #AnthropoceneChild in speculative texts that story the end of the world through some form of climate catastrophe. In these post-apocalyptic tales, the child-figures do different things. Firstly, child-figures reflect problematics of the contemporary world without interrupting dominant patterns of thought, materiality, and governance. In these stories, the child is the future and the future is the child. Secondly, some child-figures are tasked with protecting a world in which they have been made disposable. This incites critical questions about distributions of racialized harm and also exposes the limits of survivalist logics. Thirdly, a few child-figures refuse current arrangements of existence and set in motion new worlds, even if the contours, forces, and politics cannot yet be fully described. These are speculative worlds of not this, what if, and not yet. Different aspects of this assemblage are centred at different moments in this dissertation. The looseness of the framework allows me to move between the unsettled complexities of bionormative childhoods, anthropogenic climate change, reproductive futurism, and structures of anti-blackness, settler colonialism, and white supremacy in relation to (1) child-figures at the end of a world, (2) child-figures who save their world, and (3) child-figures who destroy the world. This dissertation is organized into two main sections: Part I provides the theoretical background for the speculative arguments developed over Part II. In Part I, I unpack my proposal that #AnthropoceneChild bookends the Anthropocene. By this I mean that the language of birth, origin, and innocence finds repetitious form in scholarly discussions of Anthropocene beginnings, and that child-figures are pivotal to playing out the end of the world in pop culture performances of Anthropocene pedagogy. Part II consists of three chapters that engage with speculative child-figures that inherit and inhabit a damaged planet. This includes grappling with racialized technologies of care and abandonment, folding parent-child relations into environmental discourses of stewardship, and gesturing towards imaginaries of what might be possible after the end of the (white) world. The conclusion pulls the ideas and figures of previous chapters together in a queer-kin consideration of geos-futurities for #AnthropoceneChild wherein the end of the world might not be a cause for mourning but a possibility for an otherwise. / Graduate

La biodiversité et le fonctionnement des écosystèmes sont des propriétés écologiques essentielles qui ont une incidence sur le bien-être humain. Des études sur la manière dont les deux biens sont affectés par les activités humaines et par le changement climatique fournissent les connaissances indispensables pour orienter la gestion des ressources naturelles. Les données de rétroobservation à long terme permettent de reconstituer l’histoire environnementale passée et offrent d’excellentes opportunités d’acquérir de telles connaissances. L'ADN sédimentaire est un outil émergent permettant de reconstituer la biodiversité passée détaillée au niveau du bassin versant, grâce à son excellente résolution taxonomique et à ses origines très localisées. Cependant, les études antérieures basées sur l'ADN sédimentaire utilisaient rarement le riche arsenal de méthodes d'analyse écologique numérique existantes, développées pour différents types de données écologiques. Dans la présente thèse, nous avons examiné les applications potentielles de telles méthodes sur des études basées sur l'ADN sédimentaire. Avec plusieurs exemples d’études, nous avons montré comment ces méthodes peuvent optimiser les connaissances acquises lors de l’analyse d’ensembles de données multiproxy comprenant des enregistrements sédimentaires d’ADN, de sédimentologie et climatiques. Malgré certaines limitations, l’analyse numérique basée sur l’ADN sédimentaire combinée aux enregistrements de proxies traditionnels est un outil puissant pour démêler les interactions complexes écosystémiques. Les futurs progrès méthodologiques dans l'analyse de l'ADN et les méthodes numériques sont prometteurs pour fournir une compréhension inestimable sur les facteurs de changement de la biodiversité et du fonctionnement des écosystèmes à grande échelle spatiale et temporelle. / Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are crucial ecological properties that impact human welfare. Studies on how both properties are affected by human activities and by climate change provide indispensable knowledge to guide natural resource management. Long-term retro-observational data allow to reconstruct past environmental history and offer excellent opportunities to gain such knowledge. Sedimentary DNA is an emerging tool to reconstruct detailed past biodiversity in catchment level, thanks to its excellent taxonomic resolution and highly localized origins. However, previous studies based on sedimentary DNA rarely utilized the existing rich arsenal of numerical ecological analysis methods, which are developed for various types of ecological data. In the present thesis we reviewed the potential applications of such methods on sedimentary-DNA-based studies. With several example studies, we showed how these methods can maximize the knowledge gained from the analysis of multiproxy datasets that included sedimentary-DNA-, sedimentological- and climate records. Despite some limitations, numerical analysis based on sedimentary DNA combined with traditional proxy records is a powerful tool to unravel complex ecosystemic interactions. Future methodological advancements in both DNA analysis and numerical methods are promising to provide invaluable understanding over the drivers of changes in biodiversity and in ecosystem functioning across large spatial and temporal scales.

No description available.