By Martin Böhnert

Introduction

The term Anthropocene had been employed informally since the 1980s. However, it was atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen and biologist Eugene F. Stoermer who most prominently introduced  it into academia to describe the proposal to replace the Holocene as the current geological epoch with a new one in which “human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature” (Steffen et al. 2007, 614). As a formal unit of the geological timescale, however, the Anthropocene has not been officially adopted: the proposal put forward by the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) was rejected in March 2024 at the institutional level by the relevant subcommission of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS 2024).

Nevertheless, the concept has quickly gained traction far beyond geological contexts. In academic, political, and media discourse, the Anthropocene now functions as a de facto framing device—a heuristic for making sense of the entanglements of humanity, technology, and the Earth system. From the outset, however, it has also attracted sustained critique, particularly from social and cultural theory, which questions the assumptions, foundations, and implications embedded in the term.

These critiques can be broadly grouped into three interconnected yet analytically distinct strands: (1) debates about the geological starting point of the proposed epoch; (2) terminological and conceptual objections to the naming of the Anthropocene; and (3) ontological and political critiques of the universalist conception of “the human” that the term appears to presuppose.

Critique of Temporal Origins

The first line of critique addresses the question of when the Anthropocene begins—a matter of ongoing controversy in both the geosciences and the humanities. In geology and Earth system science, the focus lies on the stratigraphic definability of a Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), the so-called “golden spike,” which would mark an internationally recognized start to a new geological epoch. The debate gained momentum particularly after the founding of the AWG in 2009. While the working group has based its proposed GSSP on the “Great Acceleration” of the mid-twentieth century (AWG 2023), numerous alternatives have been suggested, including the onset of industrialization in the nineteenth century (Steffen 2021) and the beginning of European colonial expansion in the early seventeenth century (Lewis and Maslin 2015).

Beyond stratigraphic concerns, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have raised questions about the political and historical implications of defining a starting point for the “age of humans.” Such a beginning is not merely a scientific marker, but also a narrative—one that frames questions of causality, responsibility, and potential agency (Dürbeck 2018). Depending on the moment selected, different historical processes and forms of human-induced planetary change come into focus: the global dissemination of aluminum, plastic, and artificial radionuclides; the environmental legacies of industrialization; or the radical transformations of more-than-human worlds wrought by colonialism (Davis and Todd 2017).

From an intersectional perspective in particular, critics emphasize that planetary change must not be framed as a purely geophysical phenomenon, but must instead be understood in its entanglement with social, political, and cultural dynamics. “It is crucial for instance to see the interconnections among the greenhouse effect, the depletion of biodiversity, the global status of women and LBGTQIAs, racism, xenophobia, and frantic consumerism“ (Braidotti 2016, 32). The choice of a starting point is thus never neutral—it is a symbolic act that can obscure or expose the structural forces underlying the present crisis.

Critique of Terminology and Conceptual Framing

A second line of critique does not begin with the question of when the Anthropocene starts, but rather with the conceptual framing of the term itself. This critique challenges the linguistic and theoretical gesture of attributing planetary transformation to a homogeneous human collective—one that is positioned simultaneously as the primary cause and the potential solution to global ecological crises. In contrast, critics stress the need for a more precise, differentiated, and historically attuned terminology. It is not ‘humans’ in general, but specific socio-economic structures, political systems, logics of exploitation, and power relations that have driven the processes now framed under the Anthropocene. Such generalization obscures the fact that some human systems have historically organized life in different—in current terms: more sustainable—ways (Klein 2016; Chakrabarty 2014).

Emerging from this conceptual critique are alternative terms such as Capitalocene, Technocene, Plasticene, or Petrolocene, highlighting different, but more specifically traceable, drivers of ecological degradation. Also under scrutiny is the narrative of a renewed human exceptionalism that the term “Anthropocene,” as a proposed geological epoch, seems to imply: by declaring the human a geological force, the concept reinforces anthropocentric worldviews and reasserts a binary distinction between ‘humanity’ and ‘nature.’ This dualism has itself been identified as a key condition for planetary degradation—and is precisely what many current ecological frameworks seek to dismantle. Approaches from the Environmental Humanities, relational ecology, post-humanism, or New Materialism, for instance, instead emphasize entanglement, permeability, and the multispecies character of life.

Finally, critics point out that the Anthropocene as a meaningful category is largely situated within specific academic and cultural contexts—particularly in Western, science-oriented publics—and thus performs an act of symbolic and conceptual exclusion. The very idea of ‘Anthropos’ becomes homogenized, and in doing so, the term risks reproducing the very universalism it ought to interrogate (Haraway 2016).

Critique of Ontological and Political Assumptions

While the second critique calls for a more accurate naming of the historical forces driving planetary transformation, a third and more fundamental line of critique interrogates the ontological and political assumptions embedded in the very idea of the Anthropocene. This perspective challenges the way debates around start dates and epochal narratives presuppose a particular understanding of history and humanity: a coherent, globally valid story of ‘the human’ that eclipses or erases alternative histories and epistemologies. Such framings leave little room for other temporalities—those shaped by colonialism, racialized exploitation, gender-based violence, or Indigenous knowledge systems (McEwan 2021; Yusoff 2018).

Even the widespread claim that the present moment is ecologically, economically, or existentially unprecedented reflects a Eurocentric worldview that renders certain lives and relations visible and grievable, while relegating others to precarity or expendability (Mbembe 2020). In this sense, the Anthropocene does not merely describe a geological condition—it redefines what it means to be human. The notion of “Anthropos” as a geophysical agent produces a normative image of the human that, by insisting on factual objectivity and non-negotiability, marginalizes critical feminist, intersectional, and postcolonial work (Karera 2019; Colebrook 2017).

Even attempts to specify the ‘Anthropos’—as capitalist, colonial, or destructive—often reproduce universalist frames rooted in Eurocentric thought, overlooking the constitutive role of structural difference (Harding and Mendoza 2021; Davis and Todd 2017). In response, this critique calls for a deconstruction of the collective ‘we’ implied by the Anthropocene. Rather than assuming a unified geological humanity, it demands situated, historically accountable, and power-sensitive perspectives on planetary transformation—perspectives that take existing inequalities, vulnerabilities, and entanglements not as marginal, but as foundational to any meaningful ecological ethics (Böhnert 2025; Colebrook 2017).

Conclusion

The concept of the Anthropocene has triggered wide-ranging debates across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. While it initially emerged from Earth system science as a proposed geological epoch, its rapid adoption as a cultural and political signifier has prompted sustained interdisciplinary critique. This entry has outlined three major strands of such critique: debates about the epoch’s proposed start date and its historical implications; conceptual critiques of its terminology and generalizations; and fundamental challenges to its ontological and political assumptions. Each strand highlights how the Anthropocene, far from being a neutral descriptor, carries with it specific narratives about responsibility, agency, and temporality.

In the context of the Environmental Humanities, these critiques are especially relevant: they foreground the need for historically situated, socially differentiated, and ethically accountable understandings of environmental transformation. Rather than accepting ‘humanity’ as a monolithic agent of change, they call attention to structural inequalities and plural histories that must inform any ecological knowledge and response. The Anthropocene, in this view, becomes not just a topic of analysis but a provocation to rethink core assumptions about nature, time, and the human. This makes the term—and its contestation—a central reference point for critical environmental inquiry today.

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