‘Good Anthropocene’: The Zeitgeist of the 21st Century

Abstract

As we enter into the Anthropocene, the debate around sustainable community systems assume great significance as a response to the current economic, political, cultural and ecological crises. The Anthropocene isn’t just a new geological epoch; it is a crisis of the EARTH SYSTEM with ‘human agency’ at the centre. Hence, it is a very provocative concept. It challenges us to build a ‘New Global Ethos’ for the ‘Good Anthropocene’ – to bend curves in directions that are good for people and the planet, navigating the threats through a new moral practice and changing the course for the future using our unlimited creativity. But this, as the present chapter argues, involves a much deeper philosophical exercise to question, destabilise, and de-centre the ‘human’ in an anthroposised planet, and to work on theoretical innovations based on alternative ontological foundations (against the hegemonic order of ‘the universal rationalist paradigm’) for an era of post-human evolution. As a system of thought, Anthropocene erodes the very philosophical foundation of ‘Modern’ and ‘modernity’, and inspires the social sciences to build upon new ‘forms of cognition’ for a paradigm shift. This chapter argues that such a paradigm shift is already taking place in the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) landscape, with a compulsive pressure on us to rethink the ‘anthropos’, rejecting the notion of the homo economicus as the core ontological assumption and creating opportunities for sustainable futures through a new communitarian revolution sprouting up from epistemic ruptures in anthropocentrism, atomism, positivism and the Cartesian dualisms.

Anup Dash, formerly Professor of Sociology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India; Email: dashanup@hotmail.com