The Anthropocene as Multiple Crisis: Perspectives from Latin America

Socio-ecological conflicts about land use in Latin America are complex: they involve various actors and flare up due to the dynamics of colonization, spatial appropriation, and the commodification of land. This volume of the Handbook »The Anthropocene as Multiple Crisis« focuses on land use in the main macro-regions of Latin America from the colonial regime to the contemporary era of the Anthropocene. The contributions touch upon numerous aspects, from the transformations of material to the social practices, their political and legal regulations as well as the imaginaries of virgin territories. Consequently, far from limiting themselves to a static cartography of land use, the contributors investigate the appropriations of borders and historic transformations in land use.

Societies have culturally framed and interacted with historical climate variability or anthropogenic climate change and climatic extremes, thereby becoming more or less vulnerable to the impacts of these events. This volume of the Handbook »The Anthropocene as Multiple Crisis« focuses on climate change and its socio-climatic and socio-environmental entanglements in the main macro-regions of Latin America from the colonial regime to the contemporary era of the Anthropocene. The contributions enrich contemporary debates surrounding the genealogy of the Anthropocene in Latin America with critical perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities.

Throughout the history of the Americas, sentiments toward the environment have been problematized and aestheticized through visual representations in various formats. In this volume of the Handbook »The Anthropocene as Multiple Crisis«, sixty entries examine the crises of mining, energy, land use, biodiversity, water, and climate change in the major macro-regions of Latin America from the colonial period to the contemporary era of the Anthropocene, featuring iconic images from this context.