This book examines the role of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) in public and scholarly discussions of the meaning of the Anthropocene proposal. The status of the Anthropocene, both as a geoscientific concept and as a cultural concept becoming increasingly familiar in the public sphere, has been highly controversial. While geoscientists focus on possible geological markers and periodisation, the social sciences, environmental humanities, and creative arts have taken up the Anthropocene as a cultural concept to make sense of the planetary environmental crisis and contemporary society. This book documents intra-, inter-, and transdisciplinary debates, particularly, although not limited to, how different scholarly disciplines have responded to the Anthropocene proposal. The authors analyse how the AWG has become the focal point of a debate that straddles the boundaries between academic disciplines and public perceptions of science. The AWG thus serves as a case of the globalisation of science in terms of the global interconnectedness of scientific disciplines and the cultural significance of the Anthropocene proposal.

Martin Bohle, an associated fellow of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies (Erfurt, Germany), retired from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation in 2019. He graduated as a Physical Oceanographer (University Kiel, Germany) in 1980 and obtained a Docteur ès Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (Switzerland). In cooperation with the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (Rome, Italy), he publishes on societal attributes of the Earth Sciences.

Boris Holzer is Professor of General Sociology and Macrosociology at the University of Konstanz. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His current research focuses on political and economic sociology, social networks and world society. Recent book publications include From Globalization to World Society (ed. with F. Kastner and T. Werron, Routledge 2015), Schlüsselwerke der Netzwerkforschung (ed. with Ch. Stegbauer, Springer VS 2019) and Politische Soziologie (2nd ed., Nomos 2020).

Leslie Sklair is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. His work has been translated into more than 10 languages. He is the President of the Global Studies Association (UK). He has published extensively on the Anthropocene, including his edited volume, The Anthropocene in Global Media: Neutralizing the Risk (Routledge, 2021), the first book to analyse media coverage of the Anthropocene. In 2016 the Czech Academy of Sciences awarded him the František Palacký Medal for his contribution to Historical Sciences.

Fabienne Will is an environmental historian and historian of science. She is currently a PostDoc at the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Deutsches Museum Munich. She received her PhD in 2020 from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. Her current research focuses on the Anthropocene, the history of knowledge production, and wicked problems such as planetary health.