The article introduces the concept of posthumanistic management as a result of exploring the relationships between the Anthropocene, management and contemporary humanities. Posthumanistic management is a response to the pressing need of management reform in the context of a swirl of crises of what is called Generalized Anthropocene (and described as brutal adulthood of humanity), especially concerning the anthropogenic climate-ecological and derivative crises. The author argues that the culture of management (dominant activity of the modern world) based on greed is the reason to make management at least co-responsible for the crises of the Anthropocene next to the pathological actions and inactions of business and political actors and the dominant socio-economic system of capitalism itself. The text summarizes the attempts to humanize management (business ethics, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder theory, sustainable development, critical management studies, humanistic management) and makes an effort of posthumanistic correction of one of the dominant definitions of economic management. A posthumanistic correction of management is based on assigning agency and dignity to all, also non-human resources of management processes, and on transformation of the purpose of organizational practices from focused on particular goals of the organization towards the pursuit of the heterogeneous common good. The posthumanization of management implies, the author argues, pansolidarity, radical empathy, the fall of the mean-end dualism, redistansation and cyclization. The article ends by highliting some of the flaws of the introduced concept and some possible ways of overcoming them.

The Anthropocene is a term that not only conjures up all kinds of images in the mind but provides an impulse to reconsider the scope of human responsibility for man-triggered processes and its place in the system of related factors on our planet. At the same time, it is a term treated by many with ambivalence, reluctance, and caution, as it often harbingers the imminent environmental doom, the awareness of which may change the current balance of political and economic forces. Additionally, it is still involved in emphasizing the central role of the human, it is sometimes romanticized and can lead to an aestheticization of the climate catastrophe instead of taking actions resulting not from the will of heroism, but from humility. The ongoing debate on the Anthropocene in the field of management studies is of extraordinary importance, because it provides a framework for undertaking any activity – the activity which either aggravates or alleviates the negative environmental impact. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the contexts in which the scientific literature in the field of management talks about the Anthropocene and to explore the level of gravity that is assigned to management in this conventional geological and cultural era. Particular attention is paid to the dominant trends of reflection which illustrate a wide variety of attitudes towards the Anthropocene, including the one that places the Anthropocene against the background of efforts to maintain the status quo and the one that perceives it as a prelude to concocting alternative or even anarchist visions of management. The paper focuses on theoretical voices, which determined the method of analysis based on the study of language and the interpretation of narratives and metaphors.

The main aim of this article is an attempt at mapping the preventive strategy in the epoch of climate and ecology crisis through the lens of (post)humanities. Drawing upon posthuman perspectives, as well as methodologies and research tools, I will try to grasp the complexity of reality through relational ontologies, which linked Anthropos with the plant kingdom. As Małgorzata Praczyk pointed out, posthumanism is still not so investigated in humanities (especially in the historic field), and even when it finally appears, ended up at counterproductive reductionism. Trying to avoid this impasse, the author of this text is using the method of morphing history which allows changing the perspectives from anthropocentric one to the plants, thus polyphonic assemblages (A. Tsing) enables to re(present) the other and multispecies agency. Finally, I will map the possible perspectives in an epoch of Anthropocene according to the statement: “the environmental crisis brings a crisis of imagination”(L. Buell). In that sense, rethinking humanities with indigenous knowledge(s) is strongly needed as well as “deep adaptation” (J. Bendell) in order to understand that “humans interact not only with each other, but in all times, places and context of ecosystems, and are affected by them” (R.C. Foltz).

The contemporary business education has been promoting competition to the detriment of cooperation. This is unfortunate, given the magnitude and complexity of the current crisis facing humanity: a situation which urgently requires cooperation. Based on an ethnographic study of IT management consultants, we propose a practice-based framework for education and training rooted in humanistic management principles to remedy this lack.

When formulating proecological strategies, social imagination is devoted relatively little attention. Contribution of the humanities to the management in the age of the Anthropocene is most often perceived as explaining threats that we and the future human and non-human beings will have to face as a result of irresponsible environmental policies. Hence, the presumed task of the humanities (and social science) consists primarily in analyzing and presenting the causes and the processes which culminated in the climate crisis and the decline of biodiversity. However, such an approach does not allow this knowledge to be actively engaged in constructing alternative, proecological attitudes. Consequently, I argue in this paper that in order for the state of affairs to change one requires not only new scientific tools (methodology, language), but also new sensitivity and aesthetics. The author argues that the challenges of the current times, resulting from environmental change, destruction of habitats and ecological disasters, direct our sensibilities and aesthetics ever more tangibly towards the fantastic: horror, science fiction, or fantasy. However, while ecohorror mainly exposes the negative aftermath of the Anthropocene – culminating in the inevitable disaster – science fiction offers leeway for a more speculative approach, enabling one to construct such visions of reality in which multispecies justice will be observed and cultivated. It is therefore suggested that there is much need for a science fiction aesthetic and narration that would be capable of guiding us out of the anthropocentric entanglement and the Anthropocene into the Chthulucene (as conceived by Haraway).

The article presents an analysis of the artistic projects of three graphic artists who for nearly a decade have been trying to illustrate the causes and effects of the Anthropocene in various ways. Each of the authors in question uses a separate language of forms and different artistic tools, but their common goal is to establish, as Angelos Koutsourakis excellently put it, “dialectical representation of the Anthropocene” based on “self-reflexive representational tropes”. This self-reflexivity is not about constantly reminding that what is in front of the viewer’s eyes and what he/she experiences when entering the space of the installation is an artistic construction, but to sensitize him/her to the fact that what he/she looks at and participates in – both through form and the content – is a way of representing the causes that produce specific effects and the effects behind which specific processes lie. In the case of Sean Caulfield, it is about making the viewer aware of the cumulative effect of individual actions, which, when depicted in the form of a gradually destroyed installation, direct attention to individual acts causing global changes. On the other hand, Angela Snieder sensitizes the viewer to the influence that the historical conditions shaping the production processes influenced the way people perceive nature. The artist uses the visual attractiveness of the dioramas to blur the border between what is natural and what is industrial, ultimately confronting the viewer with the artificiality of the created reality. While Ellen Karin Maehlum raises the problem of connection between histories often treated separately: human and natural. The organisms shown by her are creations in which natural factors and those resulting from human influence on the environment combine with each other. Recognizing this fact allows us to consider natural and human history as interconnected vessels and realms that interact with each other. The article analyzes the strategies used by these artists to establish an engaging dialogue between them and the viewers, which may result in awakening the viewers’ awareness of the complex causes and effects of the Anthropocene.

This article examines quantitatively the patterns of research phenomena being observed during last years in the field of cultural studies basing on the data acquired from Scopus – one of the biggest scientific bibliographic databases. The authors of the article were inspired to undertake such research from the recent amendment of Polish legislation called the Constitution for Science, which promotes inter-institutional and international research. Therefore, the results of the investigation were prepared for all countries publishing in Scopus indexed literature, but with particular emphasis on Polish participation. The conducted research allowed to identify the dominant publication languages in the studied field, the quantitative publication share of individual countries, the average number of authors per one publication from a given country, but also made it possible to identify countries willing to cooperate with each other, which was visualized on the so-called cooperation maps. In addition, Polish and global scientific productivity measured by the number of articles was embedded in the so-called Polish “ministerial list” of journals, which may give Polish scientists of the field of cultural studies hints on the choice of a journal dealing with relevant topics and being indexed in the Scopus database.

The article deals with the issue of tension between management and unplanned consequences that result from it. By recalling the works of Anna Tsing, I indicate that management based on the modernist rationality led to the Anthropocene defined as the era of feral effects. The full agency of man, which is at the basis of modernist thinking about human-environment relations, is presented in the article as a myth. In fact, the actions leading to the Anthropocene were of the nature of not-quite-agency – their consequences were beyond the domain of human control. The article also deals with the issues of management in the Anthropocene itself, pointing out that global attempts to overcome the environmental crisis are also marked by not-quite-agency, which – in order to protect against possible negative side effects – requires inclusion in the design process by thinking about the internal resilience of the system.

* Badania nad europejskimi ekowioskami prowadzone dzięki wsparciu Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego w ramach programu Diamentowy Grant. Nr projektu: DI2014002344.

I propose a serious exploration of food and eating anxieties of late capitalism as expressed in the imagined gastrodystopia of Chew, a graphic series by John Layman and Rob Guillory featuring a cannibal detective. Viewed as a reflection on the interweaving of fears associated with the disabling impact of globalization, climate crisis, exploitation of (human) resources, as well as discourses of crises of masculinity and collapse of social bonds in neoliberalism, Chew present a new way of conceptualizing gender, consumption, waste, and community through characters that both conform to and subvert conventional gender types featured in comics and the eating practices implicitly or explicitly associated with them. Using concepts and frameworks from critical eating studies, gender studies, new materialism and crip theory, I examine the ways in which cannibalism may be used to comment on consumption and identity.

* This article is a result of a research project entitled “Crip Appetites: Teoria crip i krytyczne badania nad jedzeniem w amerykańskim komiksie” carried out at ASC UW and funded by State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled People (PFRON). Project no. BEA/000044/BF/D.