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| KEYWORD | DEFINITION |
| Adaptive capacity | The ability of a system [human or natural] to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences. Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2, 2001. Third Assessment Report, Annex B: Glossary of Terms. |
| Afrocentrism | Afrocentrism is a cultural theory that emerged in response to eurocentric/Orientalist racist attitudes about African people and their contributions to philosophy, science, history and culture. Afrocentric theory infers that humans originated in Africa, that first civilizations were in Africa, and that migrations flowed from Africa to other continents (Wolfstone, Mnajdra, p.4). |
| Agency | Barad, viewing agency not as a noun, but as a process, uses the adjective ‘agential.’ Agential realism argues that agency is performed or enacted through embodied discourse, and that all matter is agential. In a recent interview, Barad declares that matter is living: “All matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers” (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012a, np). In philosophy, agency is the capacity of a person to act with intention in the world. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure (a social actor). Synonyms: intentional, volitional. |
| Androcentric | Male centred. |
| Anthropocentrism | Anthropocentrism is defined as the dualistic notion that humans are separate from and superior to nature (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.5). Regarding human beings at the centre of existence. (Oxford Canadian dictionary) Synonym: homocentric |
| Archaeomythology | An interdisciplinary research method used to analyze cultures, both ancient and contemporary. This approach combines comparative archaeology, folklore, mythology, ethnography, history, linguistics and physical anthropology. Gimbutas pioneered the method. Harald Haarman has documented it. See also The Institute of Archaeomythology: http://www.archaeomythology.org. |
| Arctic Sea Ice Melt | A highly sensitive tipping element with the smallest uncertainty. As sea-ice melts, it exposes a much darker ocean surface, which absorbs more radiation than white sea-ice so that the warming is amplified. This causes more rapid melting in summer and decreases ice formation in winter. Over the last 16 years ice cover during summer declined markedly. One model shows a nonlinear transition to a potential new stable state with no arctic sea-ice during summer within a few decades. Source: (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (2008, February 7). Tipping Elements In Earth’s Climate System in Science Daily) |
| Biocultural Diversity | Biocultural Diversity refers to the intersection of cultural, biological and linguistic diversity, which face the common threat of extinction due to neocolonialism and ecological imperialism. Biocultural diversity is critical to cultural continuity. |
| Boreal Forest dieback | A tipping point with large uncertainty. The northern forests exhibit a complex interplay between tree physiology, permafrost and fire. A global mean warming of 3-5 degrees Celsius could lead to large-scale dieback of the boreal forests within 50 years. Under climate change the trees would be exposed to increasing water stress and peak summer heat and would be more vulnerable to diseases. Temperate tree species will remain excluded due to frost damage in still very cold winters. (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (2008, February 7). Tipping Elements In Earth’s Climate System in Science Daily.) |
| Capitalism | Capitalism is a system which favours the existence of capitalists. Capital is financial ownership of or investment in economic enterprises, denoting a distinctive form of private property. Capitalism is associated with industrialized or factory production with a free market for the exchange of money and commodities. Since the fall of communism, capitalist is the dominant economic system. Capitalist innovation tries to extract the maximum benefit from labour and thus produces wealth while deepening inequalities; it champions individualism while exercising autocratic power over labour. (New Keywords, 22-26) |
| Climate change adaptation (CAA) | The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In some natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects. Source: IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I., M.L. Parry, et al.Eds., Cambridge University Press. |
| Climate Change Mitigation | Actions taken to limit the magnitude and/or rate of climate change. Climate change mitigation involves reductions in human emissions of GHGs. |
| Collective unconscious | Some of the psyche’s contents are the result of specific individual experiences. But those contents that are generally shared with all members of the human race are called the collective unconscious. This is usually populated by universal archetypes that can emerge through dreams, visions, and fantasies. Jungian term synthesized from Mattoon (1981)& Daniels (2005). |
| Colonialism | Colonialism is the strategy of appropriating another culture’s land, identity and subjectivity in order to rule over its people (as subjects) by redefining them and writing their history from the colonizer’s point of view. ‘Colonial’ not only means ‘foreign’; it also means imposing and dominating. Political attack ads illustrate a contemporary microversion of colonialism in that a politician steals the identity of a political opponent and redefines that opponent in graphic, negative language in a way that disables the opponent from defining his/her own identity. See also Neocolonialism, Decolonization. |
| Conscious and unconscious | Jung developed specific meanings as follows: conscious refers to what is under control of the ego. The unconscious refers to what is not under control of the ego. Most of the contents of the psyche are unconscious; in other words, we are often not aware of the deep motivations for our behaviours. Personal unconscious refers to experiences, thoughts, and memories that slip out of consciousness and become unconscious, including repressed memories and emotional complexes as well as elements that have not yet reached consciousness. The process of self-realization is to bring these contents into consciousness and integrate them. Jungian term synthesized from Mattoon (1981) and Daniels (2005). |
| Conscious Participation with Nature | Owen Barfield’s ‘conscious participation’ phase describes an emerging relationship in which humans consciously merge with nature to experience “a new level of unity” through the “systematic use of imagination” to integrate conscious and unconscious aspects of nature (Barfield, p.163). The “unity and coherence of nature depends on participation of one kind or another” (p.168). Humanity remembers to think symbolically ”by valuing the Imagination as a mode of perception that brings knowledge…a way of knowing won through a total relationship” (Baring & Cashford, 1991, p.678). See also Owen Barfield in Foundations |
| Cosmology | Cosmology lies intertwined with and beneath culture. Culture is specific to place and experience and thus relatively transitory, whereas cosmology lives on for much longer once it is established in the myths, legends, instincts and traditions of people. It is deep knowledge that is lived, embodied and often not articulated in linguistic form. Cosmology survives for millennia (Wolfstone, Mnajdra, p.3). Transitions from one belief system to another require a long process of change. Remnants of old beliefs are retained in myth and custom in spite of new technologies and cultural changes (Haarmann, 2007, p. 176). |
| Decolonization | Decolonization, also known as anti-colonialism, is the intellectual, cultural and political process of resisting, exposing and interrupting colonialist power in all its forms, particularly the subtle, insidious forms of neocolonialism and eurocentrism. It is the agentic activity of enlivening postcolonial theory with a dignity-affirming bottom-up approach that transforms social relations (Dei, 2012, p.118) and reclaims the land, language and cultural rights of indigenous peoples. See also colonialism, neocolonialism. See Theory in Foundations. |
| Deconstruction | Deconstruction is an analytical and theoretical method of exposing inequities, oppressions and exclusions in order to initiate change. It helps make visible the processes which (re)inscribe dominant discourses. It is useful for interrogating that which is assumed normal and which exerts a tremendous amount of power over understanding what is doable, speakable, understandable, believable, and ultimately, possible (Barrett, www.porosity.ca). Poststructural analysis is an epistemological tool for making visible particular assumptions and oppressions (i.e. anthropocentrism), how we to make visible privilege the human intellect and how to reconstitute binaries. |
| Disavowal | Denial, negation and disavowal are three types of denialism. Disavowal involves radical splitting and a range of strategies that ensure that reality can be seen and not seen at one and the same time. Disavowal is often called turning a blind eye, but this description does not go far enough in distinguishing disavowal from negation. There are two key differences. First, with disavowal our more wish-fulfilling narcissistic part may have come under the sway of a more entrenched arrogant attitude that can exert a powerful hold on the psyche. Second, disavowal may be part of a more organized and enduring defensive structure, whereas negation is typically a more transitory defence against anxiety.” (Weintrobe, p.38). |
| Dualism, duality | Dualistic philosophy undergirds the oppression of nature by humans, as well as intersectional oppressions based on gender, race, ability and class. Descartes, the father of modern dualism, held that there are two kinds of existing things: physical and mental. He viewed the natural world as a vast machine, meaningless in itself and subject to control by humans. Since the eighteenth century, Cartesian dualism has dominated Western science, which favours materialism and reductionism. Some of the binary oppositions produced by Western dualism are man/woman, culture/nature, thinking/feeling, mind/matter. The binaries are valuated differently insofar one part of the binary is deemed superior and orderly, while the other part of the binary is valuated as inferior and disorderly, and therefore located outside the sphere of influence. This dualistic paradigm is the foundation of hierarchal systems, including patriarchy, androcentrism and anthropocentrism (Wolfstone, Unitive Experience, 2014). |
| Ecocentrism | Ecocentrism is defined as the nondual notion that humans are nature and are interdependent with all beings in the web of life. (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.5) |
| Ecofeminism | Ecofeminism integrates radical feminist philosophy and environmental philosophy. Ecofeminism proposes three core premises: 1. The oppression of women and the domination of nature are fundamentally connected. 2. This is because patriarchal dualism places women and the concept ‘Nature’ in the same classification, which is deemed to be of less worth than the ‘Culture/Masculine’ classification. 3. Therefore any process that makes humanity more ecologically aware must also overcome the oppression of women. Ecofeminism rejects neoliberal economics as inherently anthropocentric. See Foundations. |
| Ecological imperialism | Ecological imperialism describes the ways in which the environments of colonized societies have been physically transformed by the experience of colonial occupation and neocolonialism. It altered ecologies and traditional subsistence patterns (Ashcroft, p.76) through ‘development projects’ such as dams, deforestation, causing degraded landscapes, famines and dependence on international aid for food. Ecological imperialism includes Western patenting of ‘third world’ plant and animal species, agricultural monocultures and introduction of GMO crops. |
| Elemental | The elements are an onto-ethico-epistemology. Water, air and earth create the very materiality of the landscape; “wind, fire and water serve as transformative agents and catalysts of ecological change” (MacAuley, 2010, p.336). An elemental ethic points to collective responsibilities for both multi-centred and particular bodies of water, air and earth that sustain ecosystems (p.337). From a Jungian perspective, the elements conjure up mythical and material images, characterized as “archetypes, which are ideas or forms of thought emanating from the experiences of a people in such a way that they are powerfully present in the collective unconscious” (p.66). The elements are participatory; they keep each other balanced by their dynamic energies that create, transform and destroy, like Kali-Ma, and thus are inherent in the intra-action of regeneration (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.15). See also Foundation3 |
| Emancipation | in progress |
| Embodied | Earth’s elemental qualities in us are experience and stability. In epistemology, Earth provides insight on embodied existence and embeddedness in living ecosystems – the web of life. Embodied ways of knowing have the capacity to transform situations when we apply experiential knowledge, integrate sensory data and listen to the implicit. Experience is embodied knowledge. Every natal comes to being by way of sexual reproduction and is in turn sexuate (Jantzen, p.150). Natals are rooted in embodied knowing through sexuality, birthing and nurturing new life where pain, ecstasy and joy intermingle in the everydayness of living. Feminist scholars have contributed significantly to embodied epistemology, but I also draw on Eugene Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit: “Our bodies sense themselves in living in our situations. Our bodies do our living. Our bodies are interaction in the environment…Our bodies don’t lurk in isolation behind the five peepholes of perception” (Gendlin, 1992, p.345). |
| Empathy | Empathy requires imagination – the capacity to imagine the feelings of the ‘other’. Empathy with nature is the imaginal capacity to participate with nature emotionally, cognitively and ecologically. |
| Entanglement | Entanglements occur when beings “emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating” (Barad, 2007, ix). Humans are intrinsically entangled with all beings and come to matter “through the world’s iterative intra-activity – its performativity.” (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.14). |
| Epistemology | |
| Essentialism | Essentialism is the assumption, based on dualistic philosophy, that groups, categories of classes of objects have defining features exclusive to all members of that category (Ashcroft, p.77). In binary opposites, one side is valuated as inferior to the other in order to justify paternalism or oppression. “Strategic essentialism” is a term coined by Gayatri Spivak to denote “a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” (Spivak, 1985/1996, p. 214). It is used by a minority group acting on the basis of a shared identity in the public arena in the interests of unity during a struggle for equal rights. Spivak has subsequently disavowed the term because it has been misused. |
| Eurocentrism | Eurocentrism is the conscious or unconscious assumption that european cultural values are normative or universal. By the 18th century, the collective construction of european superiority, accompanied by disdain for primitivism of non-european cultures, had led to a program of colonization that imposed european intellectual authority as well as colonialist institutions of education and governance. Eurocentrism is masked as a norm of civilization through Christianizing missionary activity, and by making English the universal language of math and aeronautics (Ashcroft, p.91f). |
| Food security | in progress |
| Food sovereignty | in progress |
| Hegemony | Hegemony refers to the power of the ruling class to convince other classes that their interests are the interests of all, often not only through means of economic and political control but more subtly through the control of education and media. |
| Hierarchy | A system by which groups of people or things are arranged in order of rank, grade, class of importance. |
| Holistic | An elemental approach to holistic becoming improves on the Western dualistic model of holism in which body, mind and spirit are separate domains. A holistic onto-epistemology is indicated by narrators’ learning activities that intra-act with the five elements – the dynamisms of cognition (Air), embodiment (Earth), relationality (Water), creativity (Fire) and transpersonal experience (Space) (Wolfstone, Becomiing Ecocentric, 2016, p.33). |
| Ideology | Marx & Engel’s held two distinct theories of ideology: (a) Relations between groups of unequal power that produce a state of false consciousness for those who live within its reality, where the illusion of reality serves the interests of the economic class with greater power. (b) All people have an ideology. It is the form by which we become conscious of our world and is always an incomplete and abstract worldview because it represents the view of one group, and does not represent all groups. (New Keywords, pp. 175-178) |
| Imaginary | in progress |
| Imagination | The exercise of imagination leads to knowledge because it contributes to meaning and opens the mind to insight (Barfield, p.171). It is involved in abstraction and symbol-making. For Barfield, language is related to nature; it is metaphorical and mythical because it reflects the true character of the universe (Myers, 1998, p.7-8). Jung’s psychological interpretation of mythology as archetypes or metaphors experienced through the collective unconscious makes a significant contribution to Barfield’s notion of participation through imagination (Barfield, p.154). Jung refers to active imagination as a method of introspection for observing the stream of interior images by uncritically focusing attention on some impressive but unintelligible dream image, or on a spontaneous visual impression, and observes or interacts with the changes taking place in it (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.12). |
| Indigeneity | Indigeneity refers to an expanded, internationalized dimension of indigenousness; it recognizes that knowledge is derived from long-term habitation of a place that allows a people to reference their own established cultural, ecological and linguistic ways of knowing to resist the colonial imposition of external ideas and values ( Dei, p.34, 92). Spiritual knowing is a substructure of indigenous cultural knowledge that avoids the dualisms of sacred/secular and material/non-material (Dei, p.118). Local consciousness of one’s existence is experienced individually and collectively, socially and ecologically. |
| Indigenous knowledges | In progress. I use this term instead of “traditional ecological knowledges” (TEK). |
| Informal Learning | My definition emerged from my Becoming Ecocentric study and differs from the OECD definition: Informal learning is intentional, but it is less organized, less structured and more experiential than nonformal learning; it may include self-directed, learner-centred and social learning activities that occur at multiple sites in the family, workplace and community (EUROSTAT cited by Werquin, 2007). (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.33). |
| Intentional | See Agency |
| Intra-active becoming, intra-action | Intra-action, a neologism introduced by Barad, challenges dualism. Intra-action contrasts with ‘interaction’, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction and are constantly differentiating. Phenomena are not collections of humans and nonhumans; they are the condition of possibility of all beings, not merely as concepts, but in their materiality (Wolfstone, Becoming Ecocentric, 2016, p.14). See Foundations. |
| Matriarchy | “A social system in which the dominant authority is held by women”. M.Gimbutas. A social order where women are at the centre but do not subjugate men. In matriarchies, the focus shifts from sovereignty to archetype. Peggy Reeves Sanday. Heidi Goettner-Abendroth distinguishes matriarchy from patriarchy: In patriarchal societies, all social spheres are strictly separated and isolated in various institutions. That in turn creates elite groups and serves to enforce power interests. The result is domination and oppression. |
| Matricentric | Centered around a mother or mothers. A matrilinear culture with women as the focus; in such a culture, there is usually an extended clan structure, with goods and status passed through the mother line. This culture does not presume the subordination of men, but rather a partnership between the sexes, and the expected division of labour determined by gender (Passman: 185). See also Matriculture. |
| Matriculture | Matriculture refers to cultural traditions that valorize natality, in its literal and metaphoric meanings, and elevate mothering for its creative, spiritual, affective, educational and judicial contributions to cultural continuity (Wolfstone, 2014). Matriculture does not presume the subordination of men, but rather a partnership between the sexes, and the expected division of labour determined by gender (Passman, 1993, p.185). Women’s role as carriers of the culture is highly valued. The scholarly evidence is mounting that matriculture preceded patriarchy, however it was not a universalism. See also Foundations. |
| Matrilineal | A social organization in which ancestral descent and inheritance is traced through the mother line. Women are thus honoured but do not subjugate men. |
| Matrilocal | Having the home territory of a matrilineal kin group |
| Matristic | Pertaining to the mother in a spectrum that includes matriarchy, matrilineal, matrifocal and egalitarian. (J.Marler) |
| metaphor | In progress |
| Monoculture | In progress. Refer to Vandana Shiva and Luisa Maffi |
| Natality | Natality (n. from Latin natalis; adj. natal) means ‘pertaining to one’s birth’ or ‘native’ in reference to a place. Related words are native, nativity. (Canadian Oxford Dictionary). Synonyms: vitality, aliveness, animate, continuous birth. Refer to Foundations |
| naturecultures | I use the term ‘naturecultures’ instead of ‘social’ to signify the participation and interdependence of all beings in community. “Naturecultures” was coined by Latour and explicated by Haraway (Puig, 2009, p.157). |
| Necrophilia | Necrophilia (n. from Greek nekro – corpse; -philia – loving ) means morbid and erotic attraction to death or corpses. (Canadian Oxford Dictionary) |
| Neocolonialism | Neocolonialism is a term that builds on the concept of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism. Although countries have achieved ‘technical’ independence, ex-colonial powers and the U.S., as a superpower, continue to play a decisive role through the IMF and WB, price fixing, multinational corporations, and educational institutions. Neocolonialism is more insidious and subtle than overt colonialism (Ashcroft, 2000, p.162f) and has resulted in globalization. Neocolonizers in Africa include multinational corporations as well as governments of China and Saudi Arabia investing in oil, minerals and food crops. |
| Nonduality | A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.
— Albert Einstein How can the divine Oneness be seen? If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most — Lao Tsu |
| Onto-epistemology | Onto-ethico-epistemology in its hyphenated sense captures something important about new materialism, and that is that what is in the world (ontology), what we know what is in the world (epistemology) cannot be separated as two separate things that do not affect one another (van der Tuin). That is, things emerge in the world and they are both shaped by what we know and material simultaneously, and even more we cannot think of them as separate. Finally, for both van der Tuin and Barad, embedded within this concept is that everything that emerges is embedded in politics, and while there is no inherent way of being ethical, there are choices that people make in specific special temporal consequences by which they had a role to play and should take partial responsibility (Newmaterialistscartographies, 2015, np). |
| Paradigm | Paradigm means the systems of thought and action in a theoretical framework that denotes how a society understands and enacts reality and how it organizes itself in accordance with that reality. Paradigm is a stronger word than ‘worldview’ which describes the transient set of beliefs and values that affect our perception of reality. Paradigm is comprised of theories, generalizations and assumptions that support the application of thought to lived experience. |
| Paradigm shift | Thomas Kuhn coined the term “paradigm shift” to refer to a comprehensive framework derived from a belief system about the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and existence (ontology). A paradigm shift is a revolutionary process whereby the world transitions from one framework to a replacement framework – creating the sense of different worlds or different civilizations. In the crisis phase, anomalies arise that the present paradigm cannot explain. In the transitional phase, the breakdown of the paradigm becomes universally accepted. The shift occurs not as a revision or transformation, but as a fundamental change that requires new language, new questions and new onto-epistemologies (Dietze, 2001, p.39). The Copernican Revolution is a good example of a paradigm shift. In order to stop the spread of the Ebola virus in Central Africa, a paradigm shift is underway regarding the treatment of dead bodies. |
| Patriarchy | A form of ranked social organization in which male is the supreme authority in the private (family) and public (community, culture, government) spheres. It usually involves a patrilineal structure where goods and status pass through the father line. The Greek root arkhō means rule and thus emphasizes authority. Androcentric and masculinist are related terms which focus on male gender rather than paternal authority, and generally have phallocentric meanings. |
| Patrilineal | A social organization in which ancestral descent and inheritance is traced through the father line. |
| Patrilocal | Having the home territory of patrilineal kin groups |
| Patristic | Pertaining to the father, in a spectrum that includes patriarchy, patrilineal, patrifocal and egalitarian. |
| political | in progress. critical…hegemony… transgressive…agonism.. Disruption, deconstruction, Goal: emancipation |
| Postcolonial feminism | Postcolonial feminism has strong ties with indigenous movements and wider postcolonial theory. It critiques sexist scholarship that projects a patriarchal cosmology and social structure on pre-colonial, indigenous cultures. It exposes and interrupts sexist models of neocolonialist practice that deny women their right to participate fully in the proposed social or economic models. |
| Postcolonial theory | See Foundations |
| Postmodernity | Postmodernity is a historical period after modernity which began with the Enlightenment and ended in the 1960s when cultural and social change are linked to changes in capitalism, and a shift in focus from production to consumption. Cultural changes specific to postmodernity include eclecticism, superficiality, loss of ideology, media saturation. Cultural theorists for the contemporary period include Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari and poststructuralists. There is a crisis of knowledge related to the widespread rejection of overarching and totalizing frameworks (metanarratives). |
| Praxis | Praxis is an iterative practise of reflection, critique, political action and pedagogy with a goal of social transformation. It is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practiced, embodied, or realised. Praxis may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas. Praxis is a recurrent topic in the field of philosophy, particularly Critical Theory. |
| Regeneration | in progress |
| Relationality | in progress |
| Religion | Religion emerges from a culture’s embodied relationship to nature and gives institutional form to the cosmological ideas that precede religion, and thus constrains the imagination. Today, world religions are transcultural in scope. Religions may retain some shamanic and pagan elements but regulate and formalize tenets of faith through conceptual solidity documented in text, institutionalized ritual, and priestly roles. Note: I do not use ‘religion’ or ‘spiritual’ to describe indigenous cultures whose cosmology and cultural traditions have not been recorded by them in a writing system devised for their language and their culture. Indigenous cultures, prior to the emergence of a ‘religion’, were nondualistic and did not separate the secular and sacred as dualistic tend to do. In indigenous traditions, theism is not required; pantheism or panentheism may exist in combination with animism and shamanism. It is pre-text and pre-religion, precluding documented texts and institutionalized religions, and is thus transmitted through oral tradition and the language of culture: myth, ritual, symbols and signs. |
| Resilience | The ability of a system [human or natural] to resist, absorb, and recover from the effects of hazards in a timely and efficient manner, preserving or restoring its essential basic structures, functions and identity. Adapted from: UNISDR, 2009. Terminology: Basic terms of disaster risk reduction and IISD et al, 2007. Community-based Risk Screening – Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL) User’s Manual, Version 3.0. The ability of a human, natural phenomenon or material to recover from a shock, insult, or disturbance. (Wikipedia) It is the ability to cope with and/or adapt to long-term, systemic and secular change while maintaining or enhancing core properties. In communities, resilience is the organization’s ability to survive a crisis and thrive in a world of uncertainty. Resilience is an acquired skill that builds capacity to adapt to the consequences of a catastrophe caused by natural or man-made disaster, including climate change, a terrorist attack, long-term power outage, or similar event. A sub-set of denomination that subscribes to the creed of a denomination but interprets it through unique rituals (i.e. immersion baptism) or cultural habits (i.e. dress-code, language) that distinguish them in their denomination. For example, General Conference Mennonites and Old Colony Mennonites are both sects within the denomination called Mennonite. Differences of belief are not substantive but they may be perceived as a splinter group or faction. |
| Self-Sufficiency | The ability to supply one’s needs for a commodity, especially food, from one’s own resources. Independence. (Canadian Oxford Dictionary) personal or collective autonomy. Some first nations continue to be self-sufficient, never having given up their traditional ways of hunting and gathering food. |
| Separation | alienation, apathy, estrangement, anxiety, anomie, confusion. |
| Spirituality | I do not use this word because it has conflicting meanings. It often imposes colonialist nuances from the Christian dualism of Trinity and the secular dualism of body/mind/spirit. |
| States of consciousness | There are several states of consciousness, including sleep, coma and waking. The relationship between the mind and the world can be altered using diverse means to move into an altered states of consciousness (ASC) which Jung called numinous experience. Some altered states occur naturally; some are caused by brain damage and some are induced, at will, through mind altering activities or psychoactive drugs. See table on Brain Activity in States of Consciousness in (Wolfstone, Unitive Experience, 2013, p.49). |
| Strategic essentialism | “Strategic essentialism” is a term coined by Gayatri Spivak to denote “a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” (Spivak, 1985/1996, p. 214); it is used by a minority group acting on the basis of a shared identity in the public arena in the interests of unity during a struggle for equal rights. Spivak has subsequently disavowed the term because it has been misused. |
| Subaltern | Subaltern refers to peoples who have been silenced in the administration of colonial states which impose a false essentialist identity on the subaltern. According to Spivak, the subaltern is denied access to political forms of representation in hegemonic power structures. |
| Sustainability | I do not use this word because it has conflicting meanings related to economics, ecology and human communities. It is complicit with anthropocentrism. |
| Symbology | In progress. See also imaginary. |
| Theology | Theology is the study (ology) of God (Theos), and relates to the God of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam and B’hai). It is a scholarly (academic) approach that considers historical scholarship as well as recent research that is subject to peer review. |
| Transformation learning | I discard the transformational learning theories of Mezirow, Dirkx and Boyd as lacking the capacity to address climate change. Their theories have been co-opted by the mainstream paradigm, are individualistic and uncritical. |
| Transgressive | Transgressive refers to critical ways of being that intentionally go ‘against the grain’ of the dominant anthropocentric paradigm. Becoming ecocentric is transgressive in that it decolonizes nature by deconstructing the dominant stories of place and telling new place stories of deep, embodied intimacy – a “revolution of tenderness” (Somerville, Boff). George Sefa Dei’s transgressive pedagogy does against the grain by decolonizing learning. I include transpersonal learning in transgressive learning because it goes against the grain of mainstream educational practice. |
| Transpersonal | Jung used the term ‘numinous’ to describe nondual, unitive experience in which we let go of ego to engage with our unconscious. Jung regarded numinous experience as fundamental to understanding the individuation process because it is associated with archetypes. Imagination is essential to unitive experience in order to work with the collective unconscious. Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit is relevant because it explains how metaphors emerge from unitive experience and are carried forward and given form, through language. All natals are capable of numinous or unitive experience – of entering that place of no-space/no-time where we experience At-Oneness with All-that-is. All natals have the neurological capacity to experience nonduality in altered states of consciousness (Winkelman, 2011, p.271ff). |