Justice in the Anthropocene

Questions of justice are becoming increasingly important in the global context of human-made climate crises. Drawing on new anthropological theories the editors Olaf Zenker and Anna-Lena Wolf develop a conceptual framework that can capture different ideas of justice from multiple contexts. They propose disassembling the name-giving global subject of the Anthropocene - humanity - through this multidimensional justice lens. In doing so, they question the dominance of posthumanist theories in contemporary Anthropocene debates and instead propose, quite literally, an anthropological approach - rediscovering and reclaiming the human as an indispensable category of analysis and action for a new anthropology (not only) of justice in the Anthropocene. Five ethnographic case studies demonstrate why humans remain essential, and why such an anthropological approach adhering to human agency and responsibility in the face of multiple global crises promises useful political returns.