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Making an Anthropocene Ocean: Synoptic Geographies of the International Geophysical Year (1957‐1958)

Lehman, J.

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Abstract

Although the notion of the Anthropocene has generated a great deal of literature across disciplines, the geographic critique of this concept is still developing. This article contributes to justice-oriented engagements with the Anthropocene by highlighting the relationships through which planetary knowledge is constructed as sites of critique. I develop an analytic of synoptic geographies, which addresses the praxis of coordinated field measurements that creates the planetary knowledge on which concepts of the Anthropocene rest. Synoptic geographies require a geographic analytic that is capable of going beyond assertions that all knowledge is local. The International Geophysical Year (IGY; 1957–1958) provides a strategic opportunity to elaborate the stakes of synoptic geographies. The IGY was arguably the first attempt to understand the Earth as a planet through a program of widespread synoptic data collection. In particular, the synoptic geographies of the IGY’s oceanography program reveal the ways in which old and new forms of imperialism were knitted together to produce the world ocean as an object of knowledge in a new era of planetary-scale environmental politics.

Citation

Lehman, J. (2020). Making an Anthropocene Ocean: Synoptic Geographies of the International Geophysical Year (1957‐1958). Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(3), 606-622. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1644988

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 23, 2019
Online Publication Date Sep 16, 2019
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date Jul 22, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Annals of the American Association of Geographers
Print ISSN 2469-4452
Electronic ISSN 2469-4460
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 110
Issue 3
Pages 606-622
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1644988

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