Abstract
The editorial introduces the Cultural Science Journal special issue “The Human Condition for the Anthropocene: Being more-than-human” as an intervention in how culture is understood under planetary-scale anthropogenic change. Treating the Anthropocene as a contested but pragmatic shorthand for a socio-ecological condition, it foregrounds culture as an operating system of planetary change rather than an epiphenomenon. Drawing on a systemist sensibility, it frames societies, technologies, and ecosystems as open, interdependent systems whose emergent properties are shaped by cultural techniques. Seven exemplary “gateways” (waters, urban heat, AI, agro-techno-biospheres, blue and brown technospheres, plural knowledges, planetary metrics) illustrate where cultural formations and Earth-system processes are tightly coupled. Methodological pluralism and explicit normativity are invited to examine, critique, and reconfigure Anthropocene cultural infrastructures for more just, livable futures.