Urbanization of Society-Nature Relations in the Anthropocene Epoch: Towards the Political Ecology of Cyborg Cities

One of the main drivers in the Anthropocene epoch is the increasing expansion of urban areas, which, especially after the Industrial Revolution, has played a pivotal and very significant role in the transformations of nature. The article aimed to answer the question that, the fundamental changes in the society-nature relations via urban dynamics in the Anthropocene epoch what effects have had on the socio-ecological processes of geographical environments, and why are we still facing unsustainable and uneven metabolisms? 

The main presumption is that understanding the nature of problems related to society-nature relations and achieving better conditions needs more than technical, technological, and managerial instruments; because ideas and actions about the environment, population, and resources are not neutral, and they operate in the context of the diverse structures of political economy and a wide network of agents, and actors. So, this article, based on a critical analysis of the approaches in this field, tries to shift attention to the ideas and actions that are more efficient and effective in contemporary conditions. First of all, the new perspectives on the society-nature relation in the Anthropocene epoch have been reviewed. Then, two main currents of thought on society-nature relations have been critically analyzed through urban dynamics. Finally, based on the already discussed, the idea of ​​“Political Ecology of Cyborg Cities” has been discussed as a more realistic and effective policy approach for confronting the issues and problems of the society-nature interactions in the contemporary networked and hybrid world. 

The findings of this article show that over the last two decades, not only the subject of Anthropocene has gone beyond the natural sciences (such as Earth System Science, Biology, and Geology) and its widespread promotion among other sciences, including philosophy, geography, history, sociology, and law via shifting to the urbanization of society-nature relations, but also represents a discursive turn from classical ecological approaches to the urban political ecology and cyborg cities. One of the implications of such a scientific and discursive turn is that the view of “nature for humankind” over the centuries has led to the continuation and reproduction of a set of ecological relationships and socio-natural metabolisms that have acted for humankind as well as nature in an unsustainable, injustice, harmful and destructive way. Hence, nowadays, the focal ecological concern is dealing with this sort of turn from previous approaches and then presenting the discourses and actions that can change our attitudes, value systems, bioethics, and trying to achieve philosophies and actions which be less destructive in the “Urban Anthropocene Epoch”. 

The most important result of this research would be a new approach to the hybridity of society-nature in a cyborg metabolism, which indicates conceptual and theoretical boundaries that have dominated the discourse of urban ecology over the past century, are disappearing in an “Urban Age”. This transformation has led us to seek more efficient ideas for understanding the complexities of today's urban world and its interactions with nature; A view that tries to put the society-nature relationship on the agenda and regard that interactions not as two separate realms but as a constructive form of urban metabolism in an intertwined network of agents and actors.