Peter Sutoris. Educating for the Anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence

Education is widely heralded as a means of addressing global climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental problems. However, environmental education intersects with a place’s historical and cultural context, especially in areas that have been subject to institutionalized racism, colonialism, and other structures of disenfranchisement. In this book, Educating for the Anthropocene: Schooling and Activism in the Face of Slow Violence, Peter Sutoris (2022) mourns the onset of the Anthropocene—the geologic era wherein humans are the primary cause of planetary change—seeing it as representative of greed, human hubris, and vengeance against nature. Sutoris presents his public anthropology research at sites in India and South Africa that have been subject to relocation due to dam construction and air pollution, respectively. Through engaging with residents, students, educators, administrators, activists, and politicians, Sutoris describes the institutionalized, career-oriented educational structure and the lack of critical thinking skills that might enable students to envision a different future. Sutoris sketches out a number of ways in which education might be re-envisioned to equip students with the skills for a precarious and rapidly changing future. I conclude that while the book is a valuable contribution to the literature, Sutoris’ perspective is unnecessarily apocalyptic and that technology is and will continue to be a critical part of a good Anthropocene. It is worth noting that this is an ethnography, not a teaching guide. However, it would be of great interest to environmental educators and activists seeking to deeply reflect on their practice, especially as a form of global activism.