Oliganthropocene

English edit

Etymology edit

Blend of olig- +‎ Anthropocene. Coined by Belgian geographer Erik Swyngedouw in 2013.

Proper noun edit

Oliganthropocene

The current geological epoch, understood as characterised by the destructive effects of the behaviour of a small group of wealthy and powerful people.
- 2016, Lazaros Karaliotis, Giovanni Bettini, “Urban resilience, the local and the politics of the Anthropocene: reflections on the future of the urban environment”, in Kevin Archer, Kris Bezdecny, editors, Handbook of Cities and the Environment‎^[1], Edward Elgar, page 67:
  Many are concerned that the quasi-eschatological emphasis on the Anthropocene as epochal, planetary rupture can obscure the driving forces behind the "great acceleration" (basically, Western industrialization and capital, rather than "mankind"), and the fact that not everybody on the planet has had the same role in the story (Malm and Hornborg, 2014; Moore, 2014; Collard et al., 2015; Haraway, 2015). Capitalocene and Oliganthropocene – the variations polemically proposed by Jason Moore and Erik Swyngedouw – epitomize well such concerns.
- 2018, Alessandro Pinzani, “The new millenarianism: On the end of the world and of capitalism as we know them”, in Civitas – Revista de Ciências Sociais‎^[2], volume 18, number 3, →DOI:
  Having one fewer child would save 58 tons of CO2-equivalents per year, compared to 2.4 tons if one decided to live car free, 0.82 if one decided to live on a plant-based diet and 0.21 if one decided to recycle (Wynes and Nicholas 2017). Of course, these data would be very different for individuals living in poor countries. For this reason Erik Swyngedouw (2013) has proposed substituting the term anthropocene with the term Oliganthropocene, since only a small fraction of humanity is responsible for the most relevant environmental changes.
- 2020, Vincent Ialenti, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now‎^[3], MIT Press, page 17:
  Why not call out capitalism as a culprit by renaming the Anthropocene the Capitalocene? Or call out the one-percenters by renaming it the Oliganthropocene?

Usage notes edit

Used as an alternative to "Anthropocene" to indicate the view that a small group of people, rather than humanity as a whole, is responsible for environmental transformations.