Rupture: Towards a critical, emplaced, and experiential view of nature-society crisis

Abstract

We are currently seeing a global escalation in social and environmental disruption, yet concepts like the Anthropocene do not fully capture the intensity and generative scope of this crisis. ‘Rupture’ is being used as a term for specific and intense episodes of change, such as wildfires or toxic pollution releases. This is a useful addition to our lexicon for nature-society change but needs to be more robustly theorized. Defining rupture as an intense and adverse episode of nature-society disruption that ripples across scales, we elaborate four dimensions that account for rupture's sources and uncertain effects. The first two dimensions consider how rupture emerges in space and time from: (i) synergistic spatial, material, and socio-natural changes across scales; and (ii) the accumulation of slow violence that builds towards and is exposed by punctuated shifts and crisis moments. The second two dimensions consider the outcomes of rupture, namely: (iii) heightened uncertainty, insecurity, and socio-material deprivation, which are experienced in unequal and deeply affective ways; and (iv) the scope to catalyze diverse forms of agency that play out in uncertain ways. To illustrate our discussion, we draw from our long history of research on hydropower landscapes in the Mekong region.

Ruptures of the Anthropocene: A crisis of justice

“…While in agreement with Mahanty et.al. (2023) that thinking about ruptures helps develop strong counter currents to the global-scale, depoliticising and homogenising drivers of the dominant Anthropocene discourse, I contend that we need to ‘stay with the trouble’ of the Anthropocene while constantly juggling between the events and the epoch.…”

“…Both are framed as 'resources'. Mahanty et al (2023) suggest that ruptures are 'tangible and far-reaching that cut across spatial boundaries and have longer-term cascading effects'. What follows from these particular ruptures of the Anthropocene are uses and abuses of physical and fossil energy underlined by slavery and indentured servitude propped up by colonisation and racial exploitation.…”

“…These events are ruptures that fracture the universal framing and universal urgency of the Anthropocene. Mahanty et al's (2023) detailed and useful analytics make this link clear as they explain ruptures as ‘specific episodes of intense and punctured change’ anchored in specific places and times. Although a more significant chunk of the Anthropocene literature attempts to circumnavigate intra-human politics and focuses on the urgency of uniting as ‘one humanity’ while putting (our) difference(s) aside, there is a growing body of justice-oriented narratives for the origin of the Anthropocene from decolonial, indigenous, and critical race scholars (Davis and Todd, 2017; Yusoff, 2018).…”

“…Davis and Todd (2017: 767) explain that what this new epoch is named and when it is deemed to start shape our understanding of the formation and destruction of worlds and ‘have material consequences, consequences that affect bodies and land’. Therefore, the events that mark the Anthropocene's start dates are critical ruptures that ‘signal a form of crisis’ rooted in ‘specific places and times, and their historical material contexts’ (Mahanty et. al., 2023).…”

Agrarian crisis, affect, and accumulation

“…Mahanty et al (2023) offer ‘rupture’ as a more analytically – and, I would stress, methodologically – useful concept than ‘the Anthropocene’. Their rendering of rupture closely aligns with my own anthropological inclinations to highlight contingency, genealogies, relationality, materiality, and – importantly – the words of people directly affected by change.…”