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Folia Geographica 2024, 66/1, pp. 5-33.

POLYCRISIS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE AS A KEY RESEARCH AGENDA FOR GEOGRAPHY: ONTOLOGICAL DELINEATION AND THE SHIFT TO A POSTDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

René MATLOVIČ A, Kvetoslava MATLOVIČOVÁ B*

Received: March 14, 2024 | Revised: May 9, 2024 | Accepted: May 26, 2024
Paper No. 24-66/1-700

A Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8935-6462
gmatl@savba.sk

B* University of Economics, Department of Tourism, Slovakia
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9635-4177
kvetoslava.matlovicova@euba.sk (corresponding author)


FULL TEXT

Abstract
The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch that marks the significant impact of human activities on the Earth’s ecosystems (Lewis, Maslin 2015). Humanity currently faces many interwoven challenges and traps arising from intricate interactions between humans and their environment. These challenges and traps, known as polycrisis in the Anthropocene, represent one of the greatest challenges for research across various scientific disciplines. This paper explores polycrisis in the Anthropocene as a critical research agenda for geography, discussing its conceptualization, importance, and possibilities for study from a geographical perspective. The concept of polycrisis has not been adequately addressed in the geographical literature. Geography offers a rich heritage through its various subdisciplines. This paper will discuss how these subdisciplines and other related disciplines could be integrated into the geographical study of polycrisis. This discussion will consider the ontological delineation of polycrisis within the context of geographical research. The main idea of this paper is that an ontologically highly complex and hybrid object of research such as polycrisis provides an opportunity for a shift from the subdisciplinary fragmentation of geography to the application of a postdisciplinary perspective. The main research motivation is to strengthen the social relevance of geography in the context of the quest for global sustainability.

Key words
Anthropocene, geography, geographic thought, global sustainability, multidisciplinarity, multiciris, polycrisis, postdisciplinarity, subdisciplinary fragmentation, trans-disciplinarity.

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