Place in the Anthropocene: A mangrove lagoon in Papua New Guinea in the time of rising sea-levels

Abstract

This article is an ethnographic account of one place during an unpromising moment in an epoch some have begun to call the Anthropocene. In the Murik Lakes, at the mouth of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, the Anthropocene calls logocentric and political views of "place" into question. Instead of being a site where the world is endowed with moral personhood, or where dialogue takes place with the global, "place" has now taken on a dark, conditional mood. In the Anthropocene, "place" is a site of pending tragedy, pervaded by the loss, rather than the creation, of meaning.