An Anthropogenic Table Of Elements

With stories of life in the Anthropocene, this book places Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of elements and his groundbreaking theory of elementality into modern context.

An Anthropogenic Table of Elements provides a contemporary rethinking of Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, bringing together "elemental" stories to reflect on everyday life in the Anthropocene. Concise and engaging, this book provides stories of scale, toxicity, and temporality that extrapolate on ideas surrounding ethics, politics, and materiality that are fundamental to this contemporary moment. Examining elemental objects and forces, including carbon, mould, cheese, ice, and viruses, the contributors question what elemental forms are still waiting to emerge and what political possibilities of justice and environmental reparation they might usher into the world. Bringing together anthropologists, historians, and media studies scholars, this book tests a range of possible ways to tabulate and narrate the elemental as a way to bring into view fresh discussion on material constitutions and, thereby, new ethical stances, responsibilities, and power relations. In doing so, An Anthropogenic Table of Elements demonstrates through elementality that even the smallest and humblest stories are capable of powerful effects and vast journeys across time and space.

A bold, theoretical, and pragmatic book that looks to soil as a symbol for constructive possibilities for hope and planetary political action in the Anthropocene. Climate change is here. Its ravaging effects will upend our interconnected ecosystems, and yet those effects will play out disproportionately among the planet’s nearly 8 billion human inhabitants. On the Ground explores how one might account for the many paradoxical tensions posed by the Anthropocene: tensions between planetarity and particularity, connectivity and contextuality, entanglement and exclusion. Using the philosophical and theological idea of “ground,” Van Horn argues that ground—when read as earth-ground, as soil—offers a symbol for conceiving of the effects of climate change as collective and yet located, as communal and yet differential. In so doing, he offers critical interventions on theorizations of hope and political action amid the crises of climate change. Drawing on soil science, theopoetics, feminist ethics, poststructuralism, process philosophy, and more, On the Ground asks: In the face of global climate catastrophe, how might one theorize this calamitous experience as shared and yet particular, as interconnected and yet contextual? Might there be a way to conceptualize our interconnected experiences without erasing critical constitutive differences, particularly of social and ecological location? How might these conceptual interventions catalyze pluralistic, anti-racist planetary politics amid the Anthropocene? In short, the book addresses these queries: What philosophical and theological concepts can soil create? How might soil inspire and help re-imagine forms of planetary politics in the midst of climate change? On the Ground thus roots us in a robust theoretical symbol in the hopes of producing and proliferating intersectional responses to climate change.

This comprehensive text focuses on the increasingly important issues of urban geochemical mapping with key coverage of the distribution and behaviour of chemicals and compounds in the urban environment. Clearly structured throughout, the first part of the book covers general aspects of urban chemical mapping with an overview of current practice and reviews of different aspects of the component methodologies. The second part includes case histories from different urban areas around Europe authored by those national or academic institutions tasked with investigating the chemical environments of their major urban centers.

This book explores the development and significance of an Earth-oriented progressive approach to fostering global wellbeing and inclusive societies in an era of climate change and uncertainty. Developing Earthly Attachments in the Anthropocene examines the ways in which the Earth has become a source of political, social, and cultural theory in times of global climate change. The book explains how the Earth contributes to the creation of a regenerative culture, drawing examples from the Netherlands and Iceland. These examples offer understandings of how legacies of non-respectful exploitative practices culminating in the rapid post-war growth of global consumption have resulted in impacts on the ecosystem, highlighting the challenges of living with planet Earth. The book familiarizes readers with the implied agencies of the Earth which become evident in our reliance on the carbon economy – a factor of modern-day globalized capitalism responsible for global environmental change and emergency. It also suggests ways to inspire and develop new ways of spatial sense making for those seeking earthly attachments. Offering novel theoretical and practical insights for politically active people, this book will appeal to those involved in local and national policy making processes. It will also be of interest to academics and students of geography, political science, and environmental sciences.

This book presents a novel and systematic social theory of soil, and is representative of the rising interest in 'the material' in social sciences. Bringing together new modes of 'critical description' with speculative practices and methods of inquiry, it contributes to the exploration of current transformations in socioecologies, as well as in political and artistic practices, in order to address global ecological change. The chapters in this edited volume challenge scholars to attend more carefully to the ways in which they think about soil, both materially and theoretically. Contributors address a range of topics, including new ways of thinking about the politics of caring for soils; the ecological and symbiotic relations between soils; how the productive capacities and contested governance of soils are deployed as matters of political concern; and indigenous ways of knowing and being with soil.

The scope of this work is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the aerosol pollution in the megacity Beijing. The focus lies on the interaction of anthropogenic and geogenic aerosol particles, their spatio-temporal variation, the most important pollution sources as well as the impact of particulate aerosols on human health and the environment. Furthermore, the bioavailable fraction of metal concentrations and the effect of mitigation measures during the 2008 Olympic Games were evaluated.