Negotiations of Justice in the Anthropocene: Mining Conflicts, Unacknowledged Loss and Responsibility for Absent Others

Abstract

Starting from the premise that modern legal institutions are increasingly challenged by the temporal and spatial implications of Anthropocene phenomena, this article shows how various civil-society actors struggle for a more just approach to coal-exit policies in the Rhineland’s brown coal-mining region. Contrary to general criticisms arguing that the Anthropocene narrative inherently disregards a differentiated perspective on issues of justice, I follow approaches that engage with the concept’s generative tensions and situate it ethnographically. The article goes on to suggest that growing awareness of the entanglements of industrial infrastructures with planetary crises has led to local protests against mining coinciding with an engagement for future planetary habitability. Whereas mining-induced losses were previously written off as a necessary sacrifice for growth and progress, I discuss how the affected inhabitants reframe them in this emerging context as injustices on a planetary scale. Motivated by a responsibility towards non-human others and coming generations, these coal-critical actors contest official transition measures that center on ‘green growth’ and instead call for situated policies that account for matters of concern related to accelerated planetary change. The article concludes by arguing that the pursuit of justice in the Anthropocene is fundamentally characterized by a responsibility towards absent others, spatially and temporally.