Glossary

Definitions

Anthropocene:

Paul Crutzen’s proposed geographical and cultural term for the era of human impact on Earth (Crutzen and Stoermer 20). It is widely accepted informally as a way of describing the human impact on the planet and its start date debated (Keys, et al), though its official term for an epoch is not approved by geologists (International Union of Geological Sciences). Along with others, Donna Haraway offers other terms to upend the binary language of “anthropo” that separates humans from other species, and sees the Anthropocene as “more a boundary event than an epoch,” asserting it is “our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that will replenish refuge” (“Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” 160 ). Haraway suggests the term Chthulucene to define the “dynamic, ongoing […] forces and powers of which people are a part” and in which “collaborative work and play with other terrans, flourishing for rich multispecies assemblages that include people will be possible” (“Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” 160).

Anthropomorphism:

attributing human characteristics to the nonhuman.

Bioaccumulation:

“the process by which a chemical substance is absorbed by an organism from all routes of exposures as occurs in the natural environment (i.e., dietary and ambient environment sources) and achieves a level that exceeds those in the exposed sources” (Bjorkland, Tobias, and Petersen).

Citizen Science:

Also called “community science” or “participatory science,” this is science in which “the public participates voluntarily in the scientific process to address real-world problems,” including “forming research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems” (“Citizen Science” ). See SciStarter for Citizen Science Projects you can participate in.

Environmental Humanities:

The interdisciplinary “conception of the environmental as inextricably entangled with the social” (de Graauw and Fiore 184-187).

Environmental Justice:

“The just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making and other Federal activities that affect human health and the environment,” advocating for all to be free of environmental dangers and have equitable access to sustainable spaces and health (EPA).

Invasive Species:

“A non-native species that causes harm to the environment, economy, or human, animal, or plant health” (National Park Service).

Material ecocriticism:

Serpil Oppermann writes that material ecocriticism developed from “[t]he radical revisions of our ideas about the description of physical entities, chemical and biological processes, and their ethical, political, and cultural implications represented in recent discourses of feminist science studies, posthumanism, and the environmental humanities […], and emphasizes that “we can read the world as matter endowed with stories” (21). This term highlights the ways in which scientists as observers and interpreters of the human and nonhuman world depend on their own narratives in “reading” the material world and need narratives to share their findings.

Nonhuman:

Plants, animals, landscapes, ecosystems.

Petrostate:

"A country with several interrelated attributes: government income is deeply reliant on the export of oil and natural gas, economic and political power are highly concentrated in an elite minority, and political institutions are weak and unaccountable, and corruption is widespread” (Council on Foreign Nations).

Posthumanism:

Thinking of humans as both technological and animal with permeable boundaries. Rosi Braidotti writes, “the common denominator for the posthuman condition is an assumption about the vital, self-organizing, and yet non-naturalistic structure of living matter itself,” specifically focusing on the “non-dualistic understanding of the nature-culture interaction” (Braidotti 2).

The Sixth Extinction:

our current era of human-caused extinction via climate change, ocean acidification, deforestation, invasive species, and other human causes (Kolbert 2-3).

Slow Violence:

“A violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous but instead incremental, whose calamitous repercussions are postponed for years or decades or centuries” (Rob Nixon, “Slow Violence”).

Trans-corporeality:

“all creatures, as embodied beings, are intermeshed with the dynamic, material world, which crosses through them transforms them, and is transformed by them” (Alaimo, “Trans-corporeality,” 435-438).