The Anthropocene, Ontopolitics, and International Relations

This book addresses the ongoing need to explore the implications of the ‘Anthropocene’ rupture for the field of International Relations (IR). Bringing together a group of established and early career academics, the chapters present a range of different ways of framing our current ecological and historical context, showing how they can be used to pursue new research directions and insights in areas of study such as governance, security, and migration. For that, each author displays their own preferences for a variety of divergent terms, ranging from more mainstream conceptions of an ‘Anthropocene,’ to alternatives such as for instance the ‘Capitalocene’ or Technocene. The book pursues a critical engagement with these different framings, unearthing, assessing and evaluating the ontopolitical assumptions which underpin them. In this way, the book aims to make an important political and ethical contribution to debates on the ‘Anthropocene’ and its implications for the field of IR, engaging rigorously with scholarship largely from outside the more typical US-North European axis. In confronting the growing interest in the ontopolitics of the Anthropocene, which this book conceptualises within a variety of registers, this is a vital read for scholars and advanced students in IR, but also researchers in cognate or related disciplines such as law, geography, anthropology, sociology, and the arts.

Matthew Robson is a Lecturer in International Relations at Chiang Mai University where he teaches the politics and international relations of the Middle East, geopolitics, and peace and conflict studies. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the Complutense University of Madrid, and his research interests include international security, international environmental politics, geopolitics, and ethics. He has also published in Political Geography, Critical Studies on Terrorism, and Millennium: Journal of International Studies.