Landscapes of the Anthropocene: From dominion to dependence?

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the dramatic increase in the power of human agency over the environment through an analysis of landscape change. It discusses the processes that have shaped new landscapes in the capitalist world before focusing on one place that is characteristic of the shifting balance of ecological agency in favour of humans during the Anthropocene. Banks Peninsula on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island was first settled by Polynesian peoples within the last few hundred years. The nature of their footprint contrasts with the dramatic change wrought by Europeans since the 1840s, when indigenous forests were transformed into improved landscapes of sown grass. The chapter is shaped by a broad question. What can be learned from this place about the ways in which people have exercised and are coming to terms with what Gibson-Graham and Roelvink describe as our ‘gargantuan agency’ and ‘almost unbearable level of responsibility’ in the Anthropocene (2009, 321)? It concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘middle landscapes’ as one means by which the planetary dominion of humanity might be tempered with a realization of its dependence on terrestrial ecosystems for continued survival.