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World System Science

A proposed social-science counterpart to Earth System Science, set out in The Anthropocene Crisis (Cambridge University Press), edited by Mathias Albert and Barry Buzan.

People & societyWeather & climateLiving systems

World System Science is the name proposed in The Anthropocene Crisis: A World System Science Approach, a Cambridge University Press volume edited by Mathias Albert (Universität Bielefeld) and Barry Buzan (London School of Economics). The argument is that Earth System Science, built by natural scientists to understand the planet's limits, lacks a counterpart that analyses how social and natural systems interact and which social forces drive change in the anthroposphere. The book asks social scientists and historians, in particular International Relations scholars drawing on history, economics and sociology, to build that field, and looks for common ground with Earth System Science on planetary stewardship and tipping-point risk.

The chapters include Buzan's response to the Global Tipping Points Report 2023, Iver B. Neumann on world system collapse, Heikki Patomäki on world system futures and (with Rubén Vezzoni) on growthism, Inanna Hamati-Ataya on culture, and Joana Castro Pereira's "One Planet, Many Species: Towards a Multispecies Justice Framework for World System Science Research on Earth's Tipping Points".

Status: a research programme and a book (DOI 10.1017/9781009863995, 270 pages, digital, hardback and paperback). The publisher's page read gives no publication date and no open-access statement.

aka
WSS

Tags: social science, earth system, anthropocene, tipping points, multispecies justice

staging: drafts and proposals shown