Book Review: Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences

Abstract

of the book – Engelmann is no distant narrator drily reporting on research, we follow her progress as the research develops and she becomes ever more central to the Saraceno project, from observer ethnographer, to active participant and member of Studio Tomás Saraceno. In her account of being lifted in the air by a sculpture, we feel there with her; equally we feel a sense of deflation – both physical and emotional – as a launch on a cold Berlin airfield fails to take off. This embodied situated approach does not diminish the sense of research rigor, which is situated on the cusp of geography and art practice drawing on literature across the arts, humanities, social, and environmental sciences. As such, Sensing Art in the Atmosphere will be relevant to a wide range of researchers within these fields, as well as a wider interdisciplinary community around sociology, mobilities studies, and the geohumanities. The objective is less to examine how the artworks function, or what is gained within art, but to reflect upon impact and significance of the aerosolar arts as a method within a wider cultural milieu of social sciences and humanities. It offers a call to arms to establish a new field of ‘elemental geohumanities’ and to embrace the potential of the arts to contribute to geohumanties research.