An Anthropology of Deep Time Geological Temporality and Social Life

About this book

In the face of debates about the Anthropocene – a geological epoch of our own making – and contemporary concerns about ecological crisis and the sixth mass extinction, it is more important than ever to locate the timeframe of human activity within the deep time of planetary history. This path-breaking book is a timely critical review of the anthropology of time, exploring our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation. Richard D. G. Irvine shows how the time-horizons of social life are a matter of crucial concern, and lays bare the ways in which human activity becomes severed from the long-term geological and ecological rhythms on which it depends.

Contents

Introduction

1. Time Depth
2. Time Travelling Pits and Migrant Rocks
3. Excluding Water
4. The Problem With Presentism
5. Mapping Deep Time
6. Geology and Biography
7. Enter Catastrophe
8. Wasteland

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Biography

Richard D. G. Irvine is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.