• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.265-291
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• 2021

This paper explores the academic topography of the discourses on the anthropocene to delve into how the humanities can insightfully respond to the ecological crisis of the Earth through the lens of environmental humanities proposed in a 2020 book, The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Changes to a New Age of Sustainability by a scientific philosopher, Carolyn Merchant. By publishing her latest book, The Anthropocene and the Humanities, Merchant, a pioneering scholar of ecofeminism, has recently started into inquiring into the discourses on the anthropocene, meaning a geological age led by anthropos/humans. In one of her most distinguished works of 1980, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, Merchant has revealed that the modern Western perception of nature, often identified with women, have been figuratively killing nature as well as women. Arguing in The Anthropocene and the Humanities that the anthropocene has been enacting a "second death of nature," which has been practically and technially killing nature, Merchant calls for the insight of the environmental humanities that help us to build a "sustainable livelihood" based on the "partnership" between human and nonhuman nature. This paper contemplates on what humanities can do in the era of anthropocenic planetarian crisis with the environmental humanistic alternatives in ecofeminist perspective to overcome the anthropocenic crisis aggravated by the covid-19 occurred at the point when the climate change was viscerally felt by the humans in the twenty first century.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2014

This paper examines the historical relationship between the Little Ice Age and the Anthropocene, which has not yet been studied. The Little Ice Age is the coldest multi-century period in the Holocene. The reforestation of huge farmlands, abandoned due to pandemics in the Americas, aggravated the cooling weather of the Little Ice Age. It was in the long and severe cold of the Little Ice Age that the transition from renewable energy to non-renewable energy was completed in Britain in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and when the pattern of linear growth in greenhouse gas concentrations was forged in the ecosystems of the Earth. The Little Ice Age forced humans to depend on fossil fuels while the advent of warmer and more stable climate in the Holocene enabled them to start agriculture in an energy revolution 11,000 years ago, thus making the coming of the Anthropocene possible.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.201-224
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• 2020

The term Anthropocene encapsulates the idea that the human impact on earth has already reached the level of a geological force with catastrophic consequences, such as global warming or climate change. The envisioning of an apocalyptic future of the possible demise of the human race is central to this idea. This paper seeks to explore the implications of the Anthropocene on the very idea of history and area studies. Does the planetary scope of the Anthropocenic condition, and the concerted effort in the global scale in the need to address it, mean the end of area studies, which is premised on a particularity of an area? Is a posthumanist history feasible? If yes, how can it really help address the problem? Or, it will merely muddle the issues?

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.138-150
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• 2020

This study links the concept and implications of the anthropocene to the humanistic functionalism of Scandinavian design. Since the Industrial Revolution, the direction of modern design has been centered on the standardization of mechanical products and functionalism aimed at standardization. This is based on the human-centered dual idea of human and nature. But Scandinavian countries have developed humanistic functionalist designs, with exceptions emphasizing human organic relationships to nature instead of dual thinking. This is believed to be in line with the anthropocene discourse, which envisions the emergence of a new level of humanity and the regeneration of the natural environment under the banner of equality for all species on Earth. In this paper, the discussion was embodied in a way that combines the wide range of anthropocene discourses with the major issues of posthuman and postnature, which are the latest human and natural views. And we have selected and analyzed examples of modern Scandinavian designs focused on the circulatory potential of materials, and have sought the direction of trends suitable for the anthropocene era.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.113-155
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• 2020

This paper reviews literature from history, media studies, and anthropology to provide an expansive spatio-temporal framework that examines the epistemic and material aspects of computing technologies in the Anthropocene. Reconceptualizing computing as planetary technology has become imperative in the Anthropocene, in which digital sensors, devices, and infrastructures are increasingly mediating human activities to understand, utilize, and consume the Earth. Drawing upon the previous works that have examined the social, political, and cultural elements of information and communication technology (ICT), we provide three perspectives to reconsider the relationship between computing technology and the planet. Computing technologies are increasingly being adopted to measure the anthropogenic impacts on the plant, while these technologies themselves also take part in leaving deep social and material traces upon the Earth's surface. In this sense, we argue that the Anthropocene and computing technologies are co-constructive. Such a renewed perspective on computing and the Anthropocene, we hope, would bring new scalar imaginations to future studies on ICT.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.1-49
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• 2019

First proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, the concept of the Anthropocene has had staggering repercussions in a variety of disciplines. In response to the Anthropocene narrative as a problematization of the eco-ontological emergency that humanity is confronted with in the 21st-century, I will deal with the following theoretical themes in this article. Firstly, I will analyze the central agendas underlying the Anthropocene discourse: the expansion of human agency into the planetary level and the possibility of unprecedented catastrophes in the near future. Secondly, I will propose to address the Anthropocene discourse as problem-assemblage. Thirdly, I will examine Clive Himilton and Dipesh Chakrabarty's theses in order to understand the shock that was brought to bear on the humanities and social sciences by the Anthropocene narrative. Fourthly, I will reinterpret the allegory of the angel appearing in Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History to explore new possibilities of transformative becoming of the subjectivity, focusing on the concept of patiency. Finally, I will present the concept of reflexive catastrophism.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.620-632
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• 2022

In order to prepare for the Anthropocene, this study aims to provide basic data on the direction of the Anthropocene liberal arts education by sharing experiences on anthropocene perception for undergraduates using the FGI analysis method. Interviews were conducted on 14 people who participated in liberal arts tutoring for about four months from October 2021 to January 2022, and as a result of confirming meaningful concepts according to qualitative analysis methods, a total of three topics, eight subcategories, and 16 sub-units were derived. "The advent of the new geological age" recognized that the anthrop tax was close to our lives, and it was time to predict the future through the meaning, seriousness, and development potential of the anthrop tax, and "Anthropocene Reorganization and Responsibility" emphasized the reorganization and responsibility of individuals, companies, and governments. The Direction of Human Tax Liberal Education proposed future basic liberal arts education, action practice for climate change, measures to overcome the anthropology using ICT technology, and various liberal arts education contents for a positive anthropology. In this regard, this study raised perception of the survival of mankind by in-depth exploration of the anthropocene in terms of liberal arts education, suggested the direction of future liberal arts education necessary in the anthropocene era, and suggested implications for the educational content and method.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.68
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• pp.205-241
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• 2021

This article explores how to incorporate the topic of the global environmental crisis called the "anthropocene" into archives studies and connect it to ecological practical reasons. In order to encourage discussion of archival studies, which puts the environmental crisis at a kind of archive constant value, this study seeks to examine the possibility of a quality shift in archival studies based on ecology. This article aims to go beyond the pragmatism of preparing improvements to eco-friendly record management, which is recently claimed by the "Green Archive" in Western archival studies. It calls for a new concept called 'ecological archive', which theoretically combines a more archives-based and ecological paradigm, and its epistemological transformation. Specifically, the ecological approach of archives is first discovered in the discussion of archival studies and at the same time, through the "ecological turn" of archives emphasized by recent anthropocene discourses, the concept of "ecological archive" emphasized by this article is embodied. This study uses 'ecological archive' as a universal and theoretical framework for archives as a basic concept for building ecological 'living' archives. In other words, for the construction of ecological archives, we reinterpret and extend so-called democratic values for archives, i.e., post-custodianship, community archives, and archives of emotions. Finally, the records of foot-and-mouth disease killing burial sites, an important site and example of the anthropocene tragedy, exemplifies the methodology of the actual application of ecological living archives. The case analysis aims to seek a new qualitative shift in record management that adapts to global ecological transformation, while also emphasizing the documentation by archival activism in ecological field practices jointly organized by archivists and citizens.

• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.69-85
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• 2019

Humans have been important driver to reconfigure the terrestrial surface of the Earth by altering its morphology and processes. The effect of human activities on the physical landscape, however, shows substantially uneven geographical patterns. Most of anthrogemorphoogical studies regarding human-induced denudation have focused on areas with a long history of human modifications such as humid landscapes, so the hypothesis is naturally a great human impact on landscapes. The effect of human activities on dryland Earth surfaces are far less commonly studied, although erosion is one of major concerns in arid and semi-arid region regarding land and water quality degradation. The urban metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, USA provides an opportunity to explore the impact of the Anthropocene. The Phoenix metropolitan area rests on classic desert landforms, such as extensive pediments, alluvial fans and sand sheets. Human activities including cattle crazing, wildfire resulting from introduced grass species by human, and recent urbanization processes have impacted these classic desert landforms and altered geomorphic processes. The purpose of this paper, therefore, rests in examining Anthropocene in the geomorphology of the north-central Sonoran Desert. The objectives of this paper are: i) to understand the impact of the Anthropocene on the geomorphological processes and forms through field observations; ii) to quantify the magnitude of human impacts on landscape using a published two-decade long record of erosion dataset and natural background erosion dataset in submitted manuscript at the sprawling edge of the Phoenix metropolitan region; iii) to examine how geomorphic outcome can affect the sustainability of cities through the estimation of sediment yield under the condition of urban sprawl.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.51-117
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• 2019

On 15th November 2017, the coastal city of Pohang, located in the Southeastern part of South Korea was shaken by a magnitude 5.4 earthquake. The earthquake displaced more than 1,700 residents and caused more than $ 300 million dollars of economic loss. It was the second most damaging earthquake in the history of Korea. Soon after the earthquake, a group of scientists raised a possible link between the first Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) project and the earthquake. At the same time, another group of scientists put forward a different hypothesis of the causation of the earthquake claiming that it was caused by the geological movements that were initiated by the Great Tohoku Earthquake in 2011. Since then, there were scientific debates between the two different groups of scientists. The scientific debate on the causation of the earthquake has been concluded temporarily by the Research Investigatory Committee on the Pohang Earthquake in 2019. The research committee concluded that the earthquake was caused by the Pohang EGS system: this means that the earthquake can be defined not as a natural earthquake, but as an artificially triggered earthquake. This article is to examine the Pohang earthquake can be defined as an Anthropocenic event. The newly suggested concept, the Anthropocene is a relatively novel term to classify the earthly strata and their relationship to geological time. The current geological period should be defined by human activities and man-made earthly environment. Although the term is basically related to geological classification, the Anthropocene has been widely debated amongst humanist and social science scholars. The current disastrous situation of our planet also implies with the Anthropocene. This paper is to discuss how to understand anthropogenic events. In particular, the paper pays attention to two different scholarly positions on the Anthropocene: Isabelle Stenger's Gaia theory and Barbara Herrnstein Smith's relativist theory. The former focuses on the earthly inevitable catastrophe of Anthropocene while the latter suggests to situate and contextualise anthropogenic events. On the basis of the theoretical positions, the article is to analyse how the Pohang earthquake can be located and situated.