From globalisation to the planetary: Towards a critical framework of planetary thinking in geography

Abstract

With climate change and pandemics, the last few years has ushered in a planetary age. Moreover, the concept of the ‘globalisation’—a totalising and capitalist-centric concept that homogenises the entire planet into a territory to conquer—has become incapable of adequately accounting for the planetary events taking place. To date, geographical literature has used the term ‘planetary’ in important, but disparate ways; and in so doing, underplaying the emancipatory potential the concept has in resisting the totalising concept of the ‘globalisation’. This paper looks to the wider humanities and social science to offer four propositions—materiality, human as praxis, antinational and safeguarding—the planetary can be more coherently conceptualised geographically.