In recent years leading environmental scientists have proclaimed that we live in an unprecedented time called ‘the Anthropocene’. Central to the Anthropocene narrative is the claim that we have left the benign geological era of the Holocene and entered a much more unpredictable and dangerous time when human civilization is undermining the planetary life-support systems. In this paper we discuss how the social sciences may engage with this daunting environmental narrative. Rather than approaching ‘the age of man’ as a natural consequence of human-driven changes to the global environment, this paper seeks to open up an interpretative horizon that allows for a critical social engagement with the Anthropocene as an imaginative space that fosters particular ways of seeing, knowing and acting upon nature and society. Our analysis is organized around three paradoxes that illustrate why we think the Anthropocene imaginary is a potent space for critical social theorizing.
