This presentation aims to address some of the conceptual and existential challenges that geography educators and researchers face in the Anthropocene. One challenge is about “the planetary”, a concept that has recently began to appear in social science and the humanities. Is it to be theorized as a scale, or is it un-scalable? How does it relate to Modern geographical theorizing, particularly the Global and the scale of local-global? Do we need to re-think the Planet over the Globe in a geographical framework relevant to the Anthropocene? Is the planetary also intertwined with the rise of a (partly) new object/being for geography that now is referred to as, for example; the Earth System, the Geobiosphere of the Anthropocene, the Critical Zone, GAIA? Does the Planetary therefore challenge geography´s big and dear objects (place, landscape, space,…) because they essentially have the Earth´s surface as projection plane (and not the Planetary)? And what does the “planetary turn” imply for a Modern geographical imagination that operates with conceptual fix-points like Nature, Society, Culture?_x000D_
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The other side of the Anthropocene is literally about life and death. We live in a in the midst of a planetary climate- and ecological emergency. The overall emergency narrative seems clear enough, at present we seems to be on track for about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius of planetary heating (“global warming”). In order to avoid the worst effects of planetary climate- and ecological change, we need a societal transformation that in time and scope is historically unprecedented. Meanwhile, loads of difficult existential aspects arise that geography educators will be confronted with. For example, many young people state that they are “doomed”, and the Modern hopes and promises of a better societal future is now overshadowed by a dire earthly Anthropocene future moving towards them._x000D_

Martin Gren
Linnaeus University, Sweden

 
ID Abstract: 714