Conceptual Dictionary of the Anthropocene: Vocabulary for Enhanced Contemporary Environmental Experience (Final Part)

Nov 23, 2025
9 min read

Internal Climate Refugee

A black man stands in a landscape fractured by drought (cracked earth), holding cultural elements in his hands, gazing toward the horizon with an expression of loss and disorientation. His physical home remains intact, but his cultural identity is disintegrating.

Definition: A person who, without migrating geographically beyond their country or region, experiences a process of cultural, social, and psychological uprooting due to environmental transformations (droughts, floods, soil loss, ecosystem changes) in their territory of origin. They lose identity references tied to specific landscapes, ecologies, and cultural practices, experiencing an exile within their own home.

Gender: Masculine/Feminine (M/F)

Perspectives:

Rural Sociology/Anthropology of Displacement: Studies how environmental changes affect identities, cultural practices, and community bonds.
Human Geography/Migration Studies: Analyzes non-conventional forms of displacement and the impacts of forced immobility.
Environmental Psychology: Addresses the trauma and grief associated with the loss of an "environmental home," even without physical migration.

Example: Family farmers become internal climate refugees when changes in rainfall patterns make traditional crops unviable, forcing them to abandon ancestral practices and seek new sources of subsistence, without physically leaving their lands but losing their way of life.

Development Refugee

A massive infrastructure project—a dam under construction—dominates the frame alongside people (families, communities) being evicted from their homes or witnessing the destruction of their lands, their faces bearing expressions of helplessness and protest.

Definition: A person or community displaced or whose ways of life have been destroyed by large-scale development projects (hydroelectric dams, mining, industrial agriculture, urban expansion, major infrastructure) that expropriate their territories and resources. It connects critiques of hegemonic developmentalism with analyses of forced migration, environmental injustice, and human rights violations in the name of "progress."

Gender: Masculine/Feminine (M/F)

Perspectives:

Sociology of Development/Political Anthropology: Analyzes the social and environmental consequences of unequal development and the power dynamics behind these projects.
Critical Geography/Environmental Conflict Studies: Studies forced displacements, territorial loss, and conflicts resulting from extractivist projects.
Human Rights/Environmental Justice: Denounces rights violations of peoples and communities and struggles for reparations and recognition.

Example: Riverside communities that lose their lands and livelihoods for hydroelectric dam construction become development refugees when forced to abandon ancestral territories and traditional ways of life in the name of "energy progress," without adequate compensation or viable alternatives.

Social Symbiogenesis

A thriving agroforestry system where diverse elements—trees, cultivated plants, animals, and soil microorganisms—are interconnected and flourishing together. Human figures work in harmony, harvesting the fruits of interspecific collaboration.

Definition: A process through which human societies evolve through mutually beneficial collaborations and deep integrations with other species and ecosystems. It adapts the biological concept of symbiogenesis (evolution through organism fusion) to analyze social transformations based on interspecific cooperation, where human social development is intrinsically linked to the well-being and contribution of non-humans.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Environmental Sociology/Anthropology: Studies co-evolutionary relationships between humans and other species in both traditional and modern contexts.
Evolutionary Biology/Ecology: Provides the theoretical foundation for symbiogenesis and how it manifests at different scales.
Ecological Philosophy/Systems Theory: Proposes a worldview where cooperation and interdependence are drivers of evolution and social organization.

Example: Agroforestry systems exemplify social symbiogenesis by creating arrangements where humans, trees, crops, soil fungi, and wildlife collaborate to generate mutual benefits: food production, increased biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil improvement, and farmer income, in an integrated and circular manner.

Solastalgia

A forest and river depicted in two distinct planes: the first, rendered in vibrant, healthy colors, representing memory and the "before"; the second, faded in tone or marked by visible degradation (deforestation, pollution), representing the "now." A human figure in the foreground, bearing an expression of melancholy, gazes upon the altered landscape.

Definition: A neologism coined by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht that describes the anguish or existential and psychic suffering caused by the perception of negative transformation of one's domestic environment or homeland (territory). It is a kind of "homesickness" for native landscape when it is under threat, undergoing degradation, or rendered unrecognizable, without the person needing to physically relocate. Unlike nostalgia (longing for a past time or place that can be revisited), solastalgia is the lived experience of the present in an environment that has become alienated, unrecognizable, or hostile due to exogenous environmental forces, often induced by human action, resulting in grief for a home that unravels before one's eyes.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Philosophy/Phenomenology: Questions the relationship between being and place, identity shaped by landscape, the experience of losing an expected future, and the ontology of loss.
Environmental Psychology/Mental Health: Addresses mental health impacts (anxiety, depression), ecological grief, and eco-anxiety, recognizing environmental degradation as a traumatic stressor.
Literature/Art: Explores narratives of emotional displacement and representations of transformed landscapes, giving form and voice to this existential suffering.

Example: An Amazonian riverside community that witnesses the surrounding forest cleared for cattle ranching, the river water muddied by illegal mining, and fauna disappearing. Even remaining in their village, individuals experience a profound sense of loss, disorientation, and sadness, feeling like strangers in their own home, once abundant and recognizable. Contemporary Amazonian art, for instance, often expresses this solastalgia through images of disintegrating landscapes or melancholy in the faces of residents who watched "nature" transform into "resource" to be exploited. Similarly, residents of mining-affected regions who witness the degradation of familiar landscapes experience solastalgia living in the beloved place and in its destroyed shadow.

Terrestrial Sympoiesis

An intricately woven, organically artistic network where humans, animals (bees, birds), plants (flowers, trees), microorganisms (in soil), and abiotic elements (water, air) are represented as nodes within a living web. Lines of energy and information flow between them, all co-creating the whole.

Definition: A term borrowed from biologist Donna Haraway, meaning "making-with." It refers to the collective, multispecies, and co-productive process of creating and sustaining the world. In the Anthropocene, it demonstrates that no being—human or non-human—exists in isolation; we are all inextricable partners in the web of life, for better or worse, and the world is constantly made and remade through these dynamic and interdependent interactions.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Ecology/Biology: Ecosystems are viewed as networks of cooperation and competition, where bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals co-create their environments through continuous and evolutionary interactions.
Philosophy/Post-humanist Anthropology: Challenges human exceptionalism, positioning human life as one thread woven into a much larger tapestry of interactions, not as an isolated and dominant agent.
Science and Technology Studies (STS): Analyzes how scientific and technological practices are always co-produced with the material and non-human world.

Example: An urban beekeeper does not "produce honey" alone; he participates in sympoiesis with bees, the city's flowers, the urban ecosystem, air pollution, and altered climate, resulting in honey unique that carries the material signature of this specific interweaving and could not exist without all these collaborations.

Ancestral Technology

A visual ensemble depicting diverse ancestral technologies: Inca agricultural terraces, traditional wooden farming implements, intricately woven palm baskets, and a vernacular dwelling constructed from local materials. People of different generations engage in these activities, symbolizing accumulated wisdom and enduring resilience.

Definition: Knowledge, techniques, tools, and systems developed by traditional peoples over millennia to live sustainably, resiliently, and in harmony with their territories and ecosystems. It challenges the linear, Eurocentric notion of technological progress by demonstrating how "ancient" technologies (such as agroforestry systems, water management, construction with local materials) can be more advanced and adapted to local conditions than many modern industrial alternatives in terms of sustainability, efficiency, and socio-environmental impact.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Anthropology/Archaeology: Studies technological innovations and material practices of past and traditional societies.
Indigenous Studies/Ethnoecology: Values traditional knowledge as sophisticated forms of environmental management and adaptation.
Sustainability/Regenerative Design: Seeks to learn from these technologies to develop contemporary solutions more adapted and low-impact.

Example: Inca irrigation systems, indigenous fire management techniques for pasture renewal, traditional seed conservation practices, and vernacular building methods exemplify ancestral technologies that are superior to many modern solutions in terms of sustainability, resilience, and ecological adaptation.

Intertwined Temporalities

An ensemble of clocks or gears of varying sizes and speeds, all interconnected and rotating simultaneously yet in distinct rhythms. In the background, a timeline displaying geological events (millions of years) runs parallel to a timeline of human events (decades, years, days), with points of intersection marked throughout.

Definition: Coexistence and interaction of different temporal scales and rhythms (geological, biological, social, technological, cultural) that mutually influence the configuration of contemporary experience. It challenges the linearity of modern time by recognizing multiple simultaneous temporalities, showing how slow processes of long duration (geological) encounter and are affected by rapid processes (economic decisions, technology) and vice versa, generating complexity and unpredictability.

Gender: Feminine (F) (plural)

Perspectives:

Philosophy of Time/Critical Theory: Questions the hegemony of linear and homogeneous time, proposing a more complex and plural vision of time.
Environmental History/Geology: Studies the interaction between long-duration Earth processes and short-duration temporal scales of human activity.
Sociology/Anthropology: Analyzes how societies perceive, organize, and live time at different rhythms and scales, and how this affects their relationships with the environment.

Example: Climate change illustrates intertwined temporalities by connecting geological processes spanning millions of years (fossil fuel formation) with instantaneous economic decisions (commodity trading on exchanges), biological adaptation rhythms of species (slow) and the speed of news and social media (instantaneous), all interacting to shape the crisis.

Affective Territoriality

A person embracing an ancient tree and a family gathered in a flowering garden, with visual elements (hearts, luminous threads) connecting them to soil, to plants, to a nearby river, and to cultural symbols, illustrating the profound emotional and spiritual bonds that bind people to their territories.

Definition: A form of relationship with places based on emotional, corporeal, spiritual, and care-based bonds that transcend legal ownership or economic control. It emphasizes subjective and relational dimensions of inhabiting specific territories, where the value of place resides in memories, daily practices, social bonds, and identity that form with the environment, not merely in its material value.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Human Geography/Phenomenology: Studies the lived experience of place and the subjective construction of territories through emotions and the senses.
Anthropology/Indigenous Studies: Analyzes how cultures establish deep, non-commodified relationships with their ancestral territories.
Environmental Psychology: Explores the role of emotional bonds with place in the mental health and well-being of individuals and communities.

Example: Residents of traditional communities develop affective territoriality through decades of caring for water springs, cultivating homestead gardens, participating in local festivities and rituals, creating deep bonds with place that resist pressures for displacement and commodification.

Convivial Utopia

A thriving, collaborative community embodying sustainable architecture—green roofs with flourishing gardens, solar panels harnessing renewable energy—where people of diverse ages and cultures interact meaningfully. They cultivate food together, share resources generously, and celebrate within a lush, well-tended natural environment where animals and plants are fully integrated into the social fabric.

Definition: A project of society based on harmonious cooperation between humans and other species, prioritizing collective well-being, ecological sustainability, local autonomy, and technologies that enhance creativity, reciprocity, and the flourishing of life rather than domination, control, and accumulation. It is a vision of the future that seeks balance between individual freedom, social responsibility, and planetary health.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Political Philosophy/Social Theory: Develops models of alternative societies that overcome capitalism and extractivist modernity.
Social Ecology/Transition Movements: Inspires practices and movements seeking to build more resilient, just, and ecologically sensitive communities.
Regenerative Design/Permaculture: Applies utopian principles to creating settlements and systems that promote life in all its forms.

Example: Ecovillages that combine permaculture, democratic consensus, renewable energies, solidarity economics, and mutual care practices experiment with forms of convivial utopia by creating concrete alternatives to the industrial-capitalist model, seeking to live in an integrated and equitable manner.

Ilustração: Uma comunidade vibrante e colaborativa, com arquitetura sustentável (casas com jardins no telhado, painéis solares), pessoas de diferentes idades e culturas interagindo, cultivando alimentos juntos, compartilhando recursos e celebrando em um ambiente natural exuberante e bem cuidado, com animais e plantas integrados.

Slow Violence

A chronological sequence depicting a community beginning in a state of health and gradually, over years, accumulating visible signs of degradation: factory smoke, turbid water, people wearing masks, hospitals proliferating. The illustration emphasizes the gradual, often imperceptible nature of the process. Above, a scales of justice tilts incrementally, visualizing the accumulation of injustices.

Definition: A form of violence that occurs gradually, diffusely, and often invisibly, exercised primarily through toxic structures of power (economic, political, social) that develop over time. In environmental contexts, it refers to degradation processes that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations (poverty, ethnic minorities, gender), causing cumulative damage to health, well-being, and environment, without a single or easily identifiable cause or perpetrator.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Critical Theory/Security Studies: Expands the concept of violence to include structural and procedural harms that are not immediate or explicit.
Environmental Sociology/Environmental Justice: Analyzes how social inequalities translate into differential exposure to environmental risks and pollutants.
Public Health/Epidemiology: Studies the long-term effects of environmental toxin exposure and degradation on population health.

Example: Industrial contamination of peripheral communities constitutes slow violence by causing health damage (respiratory diseases, cancer) progressively and inconspicuously, affecting primarily populations with less political power to resist, whose lives are gradually eroded without a single traumatic event.

Differential Vulnerability

A cityscape ravaged by cascading disasters—floods and landslides—revealing stark spatial inequality. The composition contrasts affluent neighborhoods positioned on high ground (dry, intact) with impoverished settlements in low-lying areas (inundated, devastated). People of different classes and ethnicities respond distinctly to the catastrophe, visually demonstrating how vulnerability is socially constructed and how environmental impacts amplify preexisting inequalities.

Definition: Recognition that environmental and climate impacts affect different social groups unequally, according to markers such as class, race, gender, age, disability, geopolitical position, and geographic location. It critiques universalist approaches that ignore how preexisting structural inequalities amplify environmental risks, making certain populations more susceptible to harm and with less capacity for adaptation and recovery.

Gender: Feminine (F)

Perspectives:

Environmental Justice/Political Ecology: Analyzes the social and political roots of unequal distribution of environmental risks and impacts.
Sociology of Disasters/Risk Studies: Studies how vulnerability is socially constructed and how it manifests in natural disaster contexts.
Public Policy/Urban Planning: Seeks to develop policies and interventions that address vulnerability causes and promote equitable resilience.

Example: Urban flooding exemplifies differential vulnerability by affecting peripheral populations more severely—those inhabiting at-risk areas (hillsides, river margins), with fewer resources for evacuation and less access to insurance, post-disaster assistance, and safe housing—while wealthy communities in safer areas experience lesser impacts.

Scientific Shamanism

An image merging elements of a scientific laboratory (test tubes, microscopes, data displays) with shamanic elements (a healer, medicinal plants, spiritual symbols, ritualistic fire), the two spheres overlapping and interacting harmoniously, symbolizing the fusion of distinct epistemologies.

Definition: An approach that integrates Western scientific methods (empiricism, data analysis, experimentation) with shamanic epistemologies (intuitive, spiritual, relational, cosmological knowledge), recognizing that different forms of knowledge can complementarily contribute to understanding and caring for complex ecological systems and to seeking solutions for the environmental crisis. It seeks dialogue between knowledge systems without hierarchies.

Gender: Masculine (M)

Perspectives:

Anthropology of Science/Philosophy of Science: Questions the exclusivity of Western science and proposes models of collaboration and dialogue between different knowledge systems.
Ethnoecology/Ethnobotany: Studies environmental wisdom and medicinal plant knowledge of indigenous and shamanic peoples.
Indigenous Studies: Values shamanic cosmology and practices as valid and effective forms of interaction with the world.

Example: Researchers who collaborate with Amazonian shamans to study medicinal plants practice scientific shamanism by combining chemical laboratories with traditional rituals of communication with plant spirits, seeking deeper understanding of plant efficacy and cultural context.

Epilogue

As we close this lexicon, we do not conclude a dictionary but open a window onto the complex landscape of our age. The words gathered here—from "Anthropocene" to "intellectual debt"—have served as beacons, illuminating the contours of a world undergoing profound transformation, indelibly shaped by human action and the rise of a new form of agency: artificial intelligence.

This dictionary was conceived as a map for an emerging territory, a guide to navigating the intersections between ecological crisis and digital revolution. We have shown that just as we have accrued an ecological debt to the planet, we are incurring an "intellectual debt" to the future of cognition. By prioritizing speed over understanding, efficiency over interpretability, we build AI systems that are, at their core, black boxes —powerful yet opaque, functional yet fragile.

Technical debt in software taught us, through hard lessons, that shortcuts in the present become insurmountable barriers in the future. Intellectual debt, we warn, exacts an even higher toll. It does not merely compromise the maintenance of code but the very ability of future generations to innovate, to comprehend, and, crucially, to govern the technologies they inherit. Poorly understood AI systems are not just a technical problem; they are an epistemic risk, a threat to our intellectual and collective autonomy.

May this lexicon, then, not be seen as an endpoint. May it serve as an invitation to reflection and action. A call for prudence among system architects, an appeal for clarity among researchers, and a reminder to all of us that the tools we create will, in turn, recreate us.

The true challenge of the Anthropocene lies not only in managing our impact on the planet but in managing our impact on ourselves. The journey to settle our intellectual debt begins now, with the conscious decision to build a digital future that is not just intelligent but, above all, intelligible. A future where innovation does not mean the abdication of wisdom.