Contesting the Anthropocene: Latin American Perspectives beyond Coloniality and Capitalism

This book provides refreshing and critical conceptualizations of the Anthropocene from Latin American perspectives, addressing questions of coloniality and capitalism. Researchers from different disciplines introduce a variety of new concepts and approaches to explore the social, political, and epistemological causes of the multiple socio-ecological crises and showcase alternative foci to cope with them.

The first key issue at the heart of the crisis of the Anthropocene is a reflection on life on Earth. This dimension includes biodiversity, the web of life, bio-centered cosmovisions, and the politics and ethics of care. Then, the focus shifts to mining and related extractivist development schemes. These perspectives place significant emphasis on Latin America’s colonial history and its enduring legacies as well on the fundamental metabolic rupture. Technology, science, and infrastructure are also crucial to the Anthropocene. The contributions examine the question of agency related to infrastructure arguing that ideas of development and growth manifest in infrastructure and alternatives or change and that they must always be considered in relation to existing structures. The volume concludes with a discussion on urban spaces.

By offering a rich array of contributors from Latin America, the book provides students and researchers with new perspectives from the Global South on the new era of the Anthropocene.

Olaf Kaltmeier, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Ibero-American History at Bielefeld University, Director of the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CALAS) and Founding Director of the Center for Inter American Studies (CIAS). He conducts the international collaborative research project "Turning Land into Capital," funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.

Luisa Raquel Ellermeier is a researcher at the Center for InterAmerican Studies Studies (CIAS) and an editor at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her work combines research, teaching, and editorial expertise, with an interdisciplinary focus on film representations of gender, indigenous resistance, human–animal relations, alterity, and subalternity in the inter-American context.

Eric Rummelhoff earned his master’s in InterAmerican studies at Bielefeld University. Since then, his work has focused on translating and editing the results of work done at the Merian Sibylla Maria Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS), particularly the handbook series The Anthropocene as a Multiple Crisis: Perspectives from Latin America.

Omar Sierra Cháves is a PhD candidate in Latin American History (Bielefeld University/University of the Basque Country). His research examines land appropriations, cacao, and coloniality in nineteenth-century Venezuela and is part of the project "Turning Land into Capital." His professional experience includes editorial work on the Handbook The Anthropocene as Multiple Crisis: Perspectives from Latin America at CALAS.

Ann-Kathrin Volmer, PhD, is a guest researcher in the Department for Geography at the University of Bonn. Her research is centered on the subjects of water governance and socio-ecological conflicts in Colombia and Ecuador. She has served as the co-manager of the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico.