Skip to main content

MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

  • en
  • de
  • en
  • de
  • Institute

    Institute

    Founded in 1994, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin is one of the more than 80 research institutes administered by the Max Planck Society. It is dedicated to the study of the history of science and aims to understand scientific thinking and practice as historical phenomena.

    • About the Institute
    • About the Max Planck Society
    • Gender Equality
    • Information for People with Disabilities
    • Information for Newcomers
    • Getting Here
    • Contact Us
  • People

    People

    The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science comprises scholars across all Departments and Research Groups, as well as an Administration team, IT Support, Research IT Group, and Research Coordination and Communications team.

    • Staff & Scholars
    • Artists in Residence
    • Journalists in Residence
    • Alumni (Since 2015)
  • Research

    Research

    The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science comprises three departments under the direction of Jürgen Renn (I), Etienne Benson (II), and Dagmar Schäfer (III).

     

    In addition are Research Groups, each directed by one Research Group Leader.

     

    The Institute also comprises of a Research IT Group—specialist in digital humanities—doctoral students, and research and teaching cooperations with other institutions worldwide.

    • I: Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge
    • II: Knowledge Systems and Collective Life
    • III: Artifacts, Action, Knowledge
    • RGs
    • RG: Validation in the Biomedical Sciences
    • RG: China in the Global System of Science
    • RG: The Final Theory Program
    • RG: Premodern Sciences of Soul & Body
    • RG: Computational History of Science
    • RG: Data, Media, Mind
    • -
    • Research IT Group
    • Cooperations
    • International Max Planck Research School
    • Doctoral Research
    • All Projects
    • Past Departments & Research Groups
  • Publications & Resources

    Publications & Resources

    The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) engages with the research community and broader public, and is committed to open access.

     

    This section provides access to published research results and electronic sources in the history of science. It is also a platform for sharing ongoing research projects that develop digital tools.

     

    Researchers at the Institute benefit from an internal library service. The Institute’s research is also made accessible to the wider public through edited Feature Stories and the Mediathek’s audio and video content.

     

    • Publications
    • Library
    • Digital Resources & Databases
    • Mediathek
    • Research Reports
    • Feature Stories
    • About Open Access
  • News & Events

    News & Events

    The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science frequently shares news, including calls for papers and career opportunities. The Media & Press section highlights press releases and the Institute's appearances in national and global media. Public events—including colloquia, seminars, and workshops—are shown on the events overview.

    • Events
    • Institute News
    • Press Releases
    • In the Media
    • Career Opportunities
    • Communications Team

Search and Keywords

Disciplinary groups
Perspectives and Methods
Video
All Anthropocene Lecture Recordings
  • Presentation
  • Mar 27, 2018
  • 01:17:25

Anthropocene Lecture - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

  • Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
  • Dept. I
  • IV. Anthropocene Formations

Followed by a conversation with Bergit Arends (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Modern infrastructures have shaped disturbance-based ecologies that force all living beings to consistently find new ways to survive. The anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing explores the possibilities of life in capitalist ruins.

“What if the Anthropocene is patchy—and more than human?” asks Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing as a guiding question for her new collaborative project "Feral Atlas." Her lecture reflects upon this new project that investigates how natural scientists, humanists, and artists use field-based curiosities to tell stories that carefully attend to how humans and nonhumans make worlds together at every scale. Tracing the recent spreading of the parasitic water mold Phytophthora from Germany to the western United States, where it kills off natural woodlands, shows that even when Anthropocene phenomena are planetary in extent, they need to be understood in relation to the patchy occurrences of infrastructures from industrial nursery sheds to the floating plantations in cargo containers.

"Feral Atlas" explores how digital media might help energize readers and listeners rather than paralyzing them, even if this means offering up terrible accounts. Connecting the scale of hyperobjects such as climate change to the human scales of ecological patches—landscapes, species, local meshworks—compels us to act instead of leaving us feeling overwhelmed.

Following her lecture, she discusses these ideas with curator Bergit Arends, reflecting on the potentialities of transdisciplinary knowledge production in discerning the Anthropocene’s relationship to representation and unpacking the larger sociopolitical consequences in researching the Anthropocene.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also Niels Bohr Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark and Director of Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA), a long-term partnering project of the Anthropocene Curriculum. She is author of The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015; German edition, Matthes & Seitz Berlin 2018) and Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2005). She is co-editor of the book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (2017).

Bergit Arends is Curator and Researcher at the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London and at the Research & Public History Institute of the Science Museum Group. Her PhD thesis of 2017 is titled “Contemporary art, archives and environmental change in the age of the Anthropocene.” She curates the Kunst/Natur program at the Natural History Museum, Berlin (2016–18), and was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Natural History Museum, London (2005–13). She studied Curating at the Royal College of Art, London. In her research, she explores the interferences of the arts and the sciences, focusing on environmental humanities, fine arts, and curating.

Location
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin, Germany
Copyrights

© HKW

  • Earth & Environmental Sciences
  • Human & Social Sciences
  • Life Sciences
  • Anthropocene
  • Politics
  • MPIWG on Covid-19
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
  • Sitemap
  • Imprint
  • Data Protection
Internal:
  • Intranet
  • Webmail
  • Welcome Page
  • Library
  • User Login

An Institute of
the Max Planck Society for the
Advancement of Science