Word.ws English Dictionary

Oliganthropocene

Oliganthropocene proper noun: the current geological epoch, understood as characterised by the destructive effects of the behaviour of a small group of wealthy and powerful people.

Proper noun

Oliganthropocene

  1. The current geological epoch, understood as characterised by the destructive effects of the behaviour of a small group of wealthy and powerful people.
    • 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...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...
    • 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...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, volume 18, number 3, →DOI

Examples of Oliganthropocene in a sentence

  • Capitalocene and Oliganthropocene – the variations polemically proposed by Jason Moore and Erik Swyngedouw – epitomize well such concerns.2016, Lazaros Karaliotis, Giovanni Bettini, “Urban resilience, the local and the politics of the Anthropocene: reflections on the future of...
  • Or call out the one-percenters by renaming it the Oliganthropocene?2020, Vincent Ialenti, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, MIT Press, page 17:

Origin of Oliganthropocene

From olig- + Anthropocene, where olig- is understood to connote especially oligopoly and oligarchy. Coined by Belgian geographer Erik Swyngedouw in 2013.

Questions about Oliganthropocene

What does Oliganthropocene mean?
Oliganthropocene means the current geological epoch, understood as characterised by the destructive effects of the behaviour of a small group of wealthy and powerful people.
How do you use Oliganthropocene in a sentence?
Capitalocene and Oliganthropocene – the variations polemically proposed by Jason Moore and Erik Swyngedouw – epitomize well such concerns.
What part of speech is Oliganthropocene?
Oliganthropocene is a proper noun.

Words near Oliganthropocene in the dictionary

  1. oligaemias
  2. oligaemic
  3. oligandrous
  4. oligandry
  5. oliganthous
  6. Oliganthropocene
  7. oligarch
  8. oligarchal
  9. oligarchic
  10. oligarchic accretion
  11. oligarchic accretions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Oliganthropocene (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Oliganthropocene.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oliganthropocene. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.