An Anthropogenic Table of Elements: Experiments in the Fundamental

An Anthropogenic Table of Elements provides a contemporary rethinking of Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, bringing together "elemental" stories to reflect on everyday life in the Anthropocene.

Concise and engaging, this book provides stories of scale, toxicity, and temporality that extrapolate on ideas surrounding ethics, politics, and materiality that are fundamental to this contemporary moment. Examining elemental objects and forces, including carbon, mould, cheese, ice, and viruses, the contributors question what elemental forms are still waiting to emerge and what political possibilities of justice and environmental reparation they might usher into the world.

Bringing together anthropologists, historians, and media studies scholars, this book tests a range of possible ways to tabulate and narrate the elemental as a way to bring into view fresh discussion on material constitutions and, thereby, new ethical stances, responsibilities, and power relations. In doing so, An Anthropogenic Table of Elements demonstrates through elementality that even the smallest and humblest stories are capable of powerful effects and vast journeys across time and space.

Timothy Neale is a DECRA senior research fellow and senior lecturer in Anthropology at Deakin University.
Courtney Addison is a lecturer in the Centre for Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington.
Thao Phan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated-Decision Making & Society and the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University.