Glossary

Terms credited to whoever introduced them. Definitions are short and deliberately uncontentious; where a term is disputed, that is stated.

Anthropocene

proposed geological epoch defined by human impact on Earth systems. Proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer (2000). Rejected as a formal stratigraphic unit by the International Union of Geological Sciences in 2024; still widely used as a cultural term.

Anti-pastoral

writing that rebuts pastoral idealisation by insisting on labour, poverty and hardship in rural life. Terry Gifford, Green Voices (1995).

Bioregionalism

organisation by natural boundaries such as watersheds rather than administrative ones. Associated in poetry with Gary Snyder, Turtle Island (1974).

Capitalocene

counter-term to Anthropocene, attributing the epoch to capitalism rather than to humanity in general. Coined by Andreas Malm (2009); developed by Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life (2015).

Chthulucene

Donna Haraway’s alternative, emphasising multispecies entanglement and “making kin”. Staying with the Trouble (2016).

Deep ecology

the position that non-human life has value independent of human use. Arne Naess (1973).

Dinnseanchas

Irish place-name lore: the body of poems and tales explaining how places got their names. Middle Irish, surviving in several recensions.

Ecocriticism

the study of literature and the physical environment. The term is generally traced to William Rueckert, ‘Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism’ (1978); the field organised around ASLE, founded 1992.

Ecopoetics

poetry as ecological practice, concerned with form and language as well as subject. Associated with Jonathan Skinner’s journal ecopoetics (2001–2009).

Environmental justice

analysis and movement showing that environmental harm falls disproportionately on poor and racialised communities. Emerged from US campaigns including Warren County, North Carolina (1982) and the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (1991).

Hyperobject

an entity so distributed in time and space that it cannot be perceived whole; climate, plastic, radiation. Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects (2013).

Inhumanism

Robinson Jeffers’s term for shifting emphasis from human self-regard to the wider non-human world.

More-than-human

term for worlds in which humans are not the only significant actors. Associated with David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (1996).

Pastoral

the literary mode of idealised rural retreat, descending from Theocritus and Virgil.

Post-pastoral

writing that keeps the pastoral’s capacity for awe while accepting responsibility and mortality. Terry Gifford, Green Voices (1995).

Slow violence

harm that is gradual and dispersed, and therefore hard to see as an event. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011).

Solastalgia

distress caused by environmental change to one’s home place, experienced without leaving home. Glenn Albrecht (2005).

Trans-corporeality

the human body understood as materially continuous with its environment. Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures (2010).

Uncivilisation

the position that the founding myths of industrial civilisation have failed and writers should tell other stories. Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto (2009). See journals.

→ Books: criticism for where these are set out at length.

Last checked 2026-08-13