This week we printed an inventory of 9 international buzzwords that may seemingly be within the headlines of 2023. Some undoubtedly sound new(ish) — like polycrisis, referring to the overlapping crises that the world is going through. Others are historic — like poverty, which is on the rise once more due to the pandemic, conflicts, local weather change and extra.
We requested you to appoint extra buzzwords for 2023. Thanks to all who despatched in contributions. Here are 5 extra phrases to observe for within the yr forward.
Elite-directed progress
Savanna Schuermann, a lecturer within the anthropology division at San Diego State University, proposes:
“One buzzword or idea I see lacking out of your piece is ‘elite-directed progress.’
The issues you write about within the story — poverty, local weather change, little one losing — stem from the identical cultural trigger. Power has turn out to be concentrated amongst elites — determination makers who make choices that profit themselves however are maladaptive for the inhabitants and surroundings (“maladaptation” might be a buzzword too) as a result of these determination makers are insulated from the impacts of their insurance policies. So they’re both unaware of the opposed human penalties their insurance policies have or they do not care.”
Microplastics
Those tiny bits of plastic — some too small to be seen with the bare eye — are popping up everywhere in the globe, in nature and in people, elevating considerations about their impression on each the surroundings and well being. The small items of plastic particles can come from many sources — because of industrial waste in addition to from packaging, ropes, bottles and clothes. Last yr, NPR wrote a few examine that even recognized microplastics within the lungs of residing folks, including that “the plastics have beforehand been present in human blood, excrement and within the depths of the ocean.”
Submitted by H. Keifer
Precariat
Someone who lives precariously, who doesn’t reside in safety. Wikipedia notes that the phrase precariat is “a portmanteau merging precarious with proletariat.” It can be utilized in quite a lot of contexts. “Migrants make up a big share of the world’s precariat. They are a reason for its progress and in peril of changing into its main victims, demonized and made the scapegoat of issues not of their making,” in line with the e-book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. And, in 2016, NPR wrote about “the ill-paid temps and contingent staff that some have known as the ‘precariat.’ “
Submitted by Peter Ciarrochi
Solastalgia
Solastalgia is, in line with Wikipedia and different sources, “a neologism, fashioned by the mix of the Latin phrases sōlācium (consolation) and the Greek root -algia (ache, struggling, grief), that describes a type of emotional or existential misery brought on by environmental change.” NPR used this time period in a narrative describing the emotional response of Arizonans who needed to flee their houses as a result of a lightning-sparked wildfire. It has to do with “a way that you simply’re dropping your own home, regardless that you have not left it. Just the anticipation of a pure catastrophe can produce its personal type of disappointment known as solastalgia.”
Submitted by Clara Sutherland
Superabundance
The phrase itself is quite a bit prefer it sounds. Webster’s says: “an quantity or provide greater than ample to satisfy one’s wants.” The libertarian assume tank Cato Institute makes use of the time period in what it calls a “controversial and counterintuitive” new e-book, Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. The thesis: “Population progress and freedom to innovate make Earth’s assets extra, not much less, plentiful.”
Submitted by Jonathan Babiak