Politics of the Anthropocene: Formation of the Commons as a Geologic Process

In the Anthropocene humanity acquires a new collective geologic identity. There are two contradictory movements in this Anthropocenic thought; first, the Anthropocenic trace in the geologic record names a commons from below insomuch as humanity is named as an undifferentiated “event” of geology; second, the Anthropocene highlights the material diversities of geologic bodies formed through historical material processes. This paper addresses the consequences of this geologic subjectivity for political thought beyond a conceptualization of the commons as a set of standing reserves. Discourses of limits and planetary boundaries are contrasted with the exuberance and surplus of fossil‐fuelled energy. Drawing on the political economy of Georges Bataille and the material communism of Maurice Blanchot, I argue for the necessity of a political aesthetics that can traverse the difference between common and uncommon experience in the formation of an Anthropocene commons.     

Crop Fertility Conditions in North-Eastern Gaul During the La Tène and Roman Periods: A Combined Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeobotanical and Archaeozoological Remains

ABSTRACT

Considerable archaeobotanical datasets describe cereal cultivation in north-eastern France, from the Iron Age to the Roman period. This study aims to complement these by using stable isotope analysis on charred cereal grains. Soil fertility was investigated through δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C analyses of 1480 charred cereal grains, dated from the Late La Tène to the Late Antiquity periods. In the Île-de-France, charred grain Δ¹³C values suggested good hydric conditions, with drier episodes in the 1st and 3rd century AD; while in Champagne, the lower Δ¹³C values for spelt reflect the lower water holding capacity of the chalky soils. A wide range of cereal δ¹⁵N values (0.8–8.7‰) implies a wide range of soil fertility conditions. Jouars-Pontchartrain and Palaiseau (Île-de-France) yielded the highest cereal δ¹⁵N values, whereas Acy-Romance (Champagne) delivered among the lowest. From these three sites, the δ¹⁵N values of red deer bone collagen were used to estimate the reference δ¹⁵N values for unmanured plants. Unlike in Acy-Romance, there were significant differences in Palaiseau and Jouars-Pontchartrain, indicating that the cultivated cereals inherited their high δ¹⁵N values from manured soil. At Jouars-Pontchartrain, the δ¹⁵N value (almost 9‰) suggested a high trophic level manuring source, possibly from pig and/or human faeces.     

‘The final decision is with the patient’: reproductive modernity and preferences for non-hormonal and non-biomedical contraceptives among postpartum middle class women in Yogyakarta,Indonesia

In Indonesia fertility has plateaued for more than a decade. Over the same period Indonesian women have increasingly accessed contraception via the private sector. Our qualitative inquiry into the contraceptive preferences of middle class women in urban Yogyakarta revealed limited interest in and intent to use biomedical and hormonal contraceptive methods. Women’s justifications for their contraceptive choices were complex and manifold: most had concerns about safety and the side effects associated with hormonal and biomedical contraceptives; others were ideologically opposed to fertility control. We conclude that contraceptive choices were an embodiment of women’s reproductive modernity, which in turn underpinned their reproductive agency. We also problematise the extent to which women’s contraceptive choices were comprehensively informed. Women’s reproductive modernity was shaped by their socioeconomic status; access to modern communication technologies; understandings of their right to health and contraceptive choice; pious yet pragmatic religious identities; and negotiations within their marital relationships.     

A Transformed Life? Geoffrey of Dutton,the Fifth Crusade,and the Holy Cross of Norton

Despite the volume of scholarship dedicated to crusade motivation, comparative little has been said on how the crusades affected the lives of individuals, and how this played out once the returned home. Taking as a case study a Cheshire landholder, Geoffrey of Dutton, this article looks at the reasons for his crusade participation and his actions once he returned to Cheshire, arguing that he was changed by his experiences to the extent that he was concerned with remembering and conveying his own status as a returned pilgrim. It also looks at the impact of a relic of the True Cross he brought back and gave to the Augustinian priory of Norton.     

‘My Dog is My Home’: multispecies care and poverty politics in Los Angeles,California and Austin,Texas

My Dog is My Home is an art activist project in Los Angeles dedicated to sharing testimonies about the redemptive bonds of care and love between homeless persons and their canine companions. These testimonies politicize the structural violence and oppressive norms about propertied citizenship and notions of home that operate to render homeless human and animal lives disposable and ungrievable. Informed by the experts’ testimonies on multispecies homelessness and an engagement with feminist care theory, we bring relational poverty studies into conversation with critical animal studies to reject this framing of homeless lives as disposable and to trouble the idea of property as the fundamental basis for value. We problematize these notions by highlighting the insights gained from witnessing the entangled empathetic relationships forged between homeless humans and dogs. These relationships are not only a window into the political economic material conditions and discourses that reproduce homelessness and the animal-as-property. We conclude that studying these bonds offers a collective politics of multispecies mutuality, care, and love.