Description

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is an anthropologist and writer based at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. His work is motivated by a triple concern: to understand the present world, to understand what it means to be human, and to help bring about social and environmental change. Apart from his academic publications, he writes essays, op-eds, and miscellaneous nonfiction intended for the general reader. His second novel was published in 2012. Much of his work is comparative and interdisciplinary. His research has involved fieldwork in several ethnically and culturally complex societies, from Trinidad to eastern Oslo. He has written extensively about ethnicity and the dynamics of culture and identity, nationalism and the politics of identity, cosmopolitanism and human rights, globalization, and its implications for the study of culture and society. Currently, he is studying the contradictions between growth and sustainability, with fieldwork in an industrial city in Queensland, Australia. In his spare time, he tries to play a bit of music, potter, around in the garden and collect unintentional consequences of modernity. So far, he has collected four (the paradoxes of new information technology, identity, affluence, and waste), and is considering the possibility of a fifth.

Abstract: Owing to increased speed, scale, growth and intensified communication, Anthropocene effects include a drive towards homogeneity. Languages disappear, consumption patterns converge, habitat loss and accumulation by dispossession lead to comparable effects on diversity both in the ecological and cultural domains. On the other hand, communication, migration and even introduced species may increase diversity. This contrast creates a need to examine the very term diversity and what it could refer to in a turbulent time of overheated globalization. Are biodiversity and cultural diversity being irreversibly reduced? The answer depends on how diversity is being conceptualized.