Suchergebnisse

Cover -- A Note on the Author -- Dedication -- Title -- Contents -- Introduction -- The Great Acceleration -- Future Perfect? -- 1. Permanent Revolution -- Chips with Everything -- A Quick History of Disruption -- Schumpeter's Children -- The Customer is Always Right -- The Revenge of the Dinosaurs -- Today Silicon Valley, Tomorrow the World -- 2. Quick Reactions -- Brain Candy -- Attention Deficit? -- Stressed Out -- Chained to the Desk -- Sleepless Nights -- The Road To Recovery -- 3. Fast Friends -- The Legend of Zelda -- Growing up Fast -- The Curse of Oversharing -- The Quickening of Desire -- The Swipe is Right -- The Automation of Adoration -- No Such Thing as Society? -- 4. The Art of Acceleration -- Kings of Convenience -- Sinking Deeper -- The Shock of the New -- Following the Crowd -- Watering the Grass Roots -- Playing the Game -- Who Needs Humans Anyway? -- 5. Tomorrow's News Today -- Squeezing the Press -- Speeding Up, Dumbing Down -- Talking Heads -- The Case for Disruption -- Quantity and Quality -- The Next Generation of News -- 6. The Pace of Politics -- The Permanent Campaign -- Governing in a Hurry -- Men of Destiny -- Judging by Appearances -- Riding the Tiger -- Getting Better Government -- Reinventing Government -- Future Imperfect -- 7. Time is Money -- Short Term, Short Sight -- Market Mayhem -- Hot Money -- The Triumph of the Nerds -- Trading at the Speed of Light -- The Case for the Defence -- The Flash Crash -- Mending the Market -- 8. Planet Express -- The Great Deceleration -- Delivering The Goods -- Going Global -- Slicker Cities -- 9. Racing to Destruction? -- Appetite For Destruction -- Global Summer Time -- Planet Of Plenty -- From Feast to Famine -- Reaching the Limits? -- Acceleration to the Rescue -- The Future's Bright -- Conclusion - Fast Forward -- Grey Planet -- A World of Possibilities

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Energy and Population -- 2. Climate and Biological Diversity -- 3. Cities and the Economy -- 4. Cold War and Environmental Culture -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index

ABSTRACT Objectives: We aim to propose the thesis that the trajectories of the Anthropocene and the current mainstream understandings of development are intertwined from the beginning. It means that the Anthropocene and the "development" are coetaneous: the implementation of development policies for the so-considered underdeveloped regions started to happen at the same time of what is known as The Great Acceleration of production, consumption and environmental degradation in a global level. Method: In this conceptual paper, we adopt a decolonial critique as an analytical lens and argue that different geopolitical positions may be necessary for approaching the issue of the Anthropocene from epistemological reflections that can include the cultural and political context of the production and reproduction of local knowledge. Results: Our theoretical argumentation sheds light on the role of Global North and South relations in shaping the environmental crisis. Latin America (LA) exemplifies the modus operandi of the intertwinement of the practical effects of development policies and the environmental consequences underlying the Anthropocene, in which natural resources are over-explored to satisfy export-oriented trade, from the South toward the North. LA is not only a propitious context to show the validity of our thesis, but also the source of alternatives to such developmental model. Conclusion: The emphasis on development as a cause of the Anthropocene supports The Great Acceleration thesis. The proposition of the name Developmentocene comes from the thesis that development and Anthropocene are coetaneous, the intertwinement of both resulting in the very definition of the new epoch.

To worry: imaginatively -- The slowing down: of almost everything -- Debt: a decelerating sign of the slowdown -- Data: the deluge of less and less that is new -- Climate: industry, war, carbon, and chaos -- Temperature: the catastrophic exception -- Demographics: hitting the population brakes -- Fertility: the greatest slowdown of all time -- Economics: stabilizing standards of living -- Geopolitics: in an age of slowdown -- Life: after the greatest acceleration -- People: cognition and catfish -- Pandemic.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that human societies have ever faced. After a late start, it is by now rather intensely debated and analysed also in the social sciences and humanities, though mostly through overly generic explanations in terms of an instrumental relation to nature, of capitalist expansion drives or of the human longing for comfort. In contrast, this article concentrates on the socio-political transformations since the middle of the 20th century, which have been referred to as the 'Great Acceleration' in the use of biophysical resources and in environmental degradation. It provides an analysis of the socio-political mechanisms that brought the resource-intensive path of social development about, showing how Western democratic societies tended to 'solve' difficult social problems by means of a triple displacement: onto other societies; onto nature and the planet; and into the future. As an unintended consequence, this displacement politics led to the globalization of resource-intensive development and to a planetary situation in which, at least as it appears in much of current debate, no further displacement is possible. The article concludes with insights for a more adequate approach to social phenomena of large scale and long duration in social theory.

Humans have, by biological necessity, always lived in watersheds. This article provides an overview of humans' relationship to these watersheds as an introduction to a special issue of Thesis Eleven on watersheds. It describes the basic functioning of watersheds, how humans have always depended on them, and how they have slowly begun to manipulate them. Humans across the planet began by making strategic adjustments to water's downward flow to aid the procurement of water and fish. As small states, empires, and finally the Industrial Revolution unfolded, these interventions became more numerous with greater environmental impacts. The rate of riverine exploitation increased dramatically post-Second World War in line with the Great Acceleration. This, in turn, created our current worldwide ecological crisis. This crisis particularly affects the planet's watersheds, and in turn, humans. The article ends with the assertion that studies of such a complex event are by necessity multi-disciplinary and inter-regional. It then outlines the contents of this special issue which examines watersheds in Asia, America and Australia.

Abstract In 1955, the SPVEA launched the Primeiro Plano Quinquenal in response to growing international interest in Amazonia's resources and internal pressure to address the region's chronic underdevelopment. The Plano was the largest modernization plan attempted in Amazonia until then. It aimed at transforming the region's rich ecosystem into the driving force of Brazil's development as well as a major raw material provider for global markets. The article examines this neglected episode of Brazilian developmentalism as an important experience preparing the entrance of Brazil in the so-called Great Acceleration. The Plano established a rational method and constructed a technoscientific infrastructure that did not just organize the modernization of the region as a whole but formed an Anthropocene culture in Amazonia. Via their planned approach to the modernization of Amazonia, the SPVEA planners introduced new representations, demands, and expectations of the region which encouraged the exploitation of its biological reality and linked it to the advancement of Brazil. Thus, the article explores, some specificities of the Great Acceleration in the Global South and sheds new light on the political and cultural origins of the Anthropocene in Brazil.

In 1955, the SPVEA launched the Primeiro Plano Quinquenal in response to growing international interest in Amazonia's resources and internal pressure to address the region's chronic underdevelopment. The Plano was the largest modernization plan attempted in Amazonia until then. It aimed at transforming the region's rich ecosystem into the driving force of Brazil's development as well as a major raw material provider for global markets. The article examines this neglected episode of Brazilian developmentalism as an important experience preparing the entrance of Brazil in the so-called Great Acceleration. The Plano established a rational method and constructed a technoscientific infrastructure that did not just organize the modernization of the region as a whole but formed an Anthropocene culture in Amazonia. Via their planned approach to the modernization of Amazonia, the SPVEA planners introduced new representations, demands, and expectations of the region which encouraged the exploitation of its biological reality and linked it to the advancement of Brazil. Thus, the article explores, some specificities of the Great Acceleration in the Global South and sheds new light on the political and cultural origins of the Anthropocene in Brazil.

A powerful and counterintuitive argument that we should welcome the current slowdown--of population growth, economies, and technological innovation.