The Somatic Anthropocene: Body, Interoception, and Planetary Crisis
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The Anthropocene has a body. Billions of sedentary, screen-mediated, nature-deprived bodies do not only suffer planetary crisis. They may also help mediate it through a feedback loop linking somatic dysregulation, compensatory consumption, and ecological extraction. This article introduces the Somatic Anthropocene: a conceptual model in which bodily dysregulation may mediate and amplify ecological crisis. Sedentary, digital, urban, and chemically altered environments may reduce movement, sleep quality, metabolic stability, interoceptive awareness, subjective well-being, nature connectedness, and embodied ecological care. These changes may increase vulnerability to compensatory consumption and growth-oriented economic systems, indirectly increasing material throughput and environmental pressure. Environmental degradation then feeds back into physical and mental health burdens, closing the loop. The article synthesizes evidence from embodied cognition, ecological psychology, interoception research, public health, youth mental health, well-being studies, environmental economics, and sustainability science. It reframes Generation Z and older Generation Alpha not as evidence of terminal somatic decline, but as early-warning cohorts in which multiple indicators of reduced somatic and psychosocial reserve appear to converge: mental-health burden, obesity, myopia, sleep disruption, low physical activity, loneliness, and digital overexposure. Finally, it proposes the Somatic Restitution Index (SRI), a preliminary framework for integrating bodily, psychological, ecological, and consumption-related indicators into sustainability assessment. The SRI is presented not as a replacement for GDP, but as a complementary multidimensional profile requiring validation through longitudinal and intervention studies. The paper also identifies pseudo-restitution—the commodified simulation of bodily repair through wellness, quantified-self, or digital-mindfulness systems—as a key validity risk for the SRI, and outlines intervention-based designs for testing whether somatic restitution can causally reduce compensatory consumption and strengthen ecological behaviour.
Author: Lick, Christian JD
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7165784247
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