Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Law, Swedish Defence University, Sweden.
Disasters. 2023 Apr;47(2):298-319. doi: 10.1111/disa.12546. Epub 2022 Nov 23.
Dramatic alterations to the natural environment due to human activity have produced a permanent rupture in the Earth system; the relative stable epoch of the Holocene has given way to a volatile Anthropocene. Acceptance of these claims means that we now live in this altered physical reality, inviting us to rethink how we conceptualise disasters. Yet, disaster scholars have been hesitant to apply the Anthropocene label and to acknowledge the profound changes that it can bring to the study of disasters. This paper queries whether this label is a necessary adage or unnecessary baggage for disaster studies by examining the possibilities and the challenges associated with engaging with the Anthropocene. An analysis of the concepts, causes, and consequences of disasters reveals how the Anthropocene provides, as the very least, a theoretical heuristic for challenging linear temporal assumptions, the epistemological status of uncertainty, and the location of agency in disaster studies.
由于人类活动，自然环境发生了巨大变化，地球系统出现了永久性断裂；全新世相对稳定的时代已经让位于不稳定的人类世。接受这些说法意味着我们现在生活在这个被改变的物质现实中，这促使我们重新思考如何概念化灾害。然而，灾害学者一直犹豫不决，不愿应用人类世这一标签，也不愿承认它可能给灾害研究带来的深刻变化。本文通过考察与人类世相关的可能性和挑战，质疑这一标签对灾害研究来说是否是一个必要的格言或不必要的负担。对灾害的概念、原因和后果的分析表明，人类世至少为挑战灾害研究中的线性时间假设、不确定性的认识论地位以及灾害研究中机构的位置提供了一个理论启发。
