Another future. Issue 1 (June 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pickering, Andrew
• Is Part Of: Possibility studies and society. Volume 1:Issue 1/2(2023)
• Page Start: 190
• Page End: 193
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Subjects: Anthropocene -- cultural change -- cybernetics -- indigenous knowledge -- ontology
• DOI: 10.1177/27538699221128225
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2753-8699

Abstract

This essay discusses the macrodynamics of cultural change. Drawing on the history of science, I offer an analysis of revolutionary transformation in terms of the waxing and waning of traditions of practice, in which marginal traditions become mainstream and vice versa. I apply this model to the Anthropocene, identifying dualist traditions of mastery and domination as currently mainstream and nondualist traditions of acting-with, exemplified by indigenous approaches to the environment and by cybernetics, as marginal. My concern is with the growth and unification of the latter as a path to another future, and I point to the need for the establishment of symbiotic relations between them, which has yet to come to pass.