A preliminary list (thanks to Becky; y’all keep them coming).  I will begin posting definitions shortly, and we may need to organize these into usable categories.

Ecotopia: As with many environmentally-oriented terms which tack “eco” onto another word/concept, this one identifies the conjunction of ecology and utopia.  This term foregrounds the nonhuman world as the basis for envisioning the ideal world — in other words, an ideal world as it is defined by perfected ecological well-being.  This basis, then, is the force behind social change which is oriented toward preserving that well-being.  See Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel of the same name which is often associated with early usage of the term; his fictive view encourages an embrace of technology, interestingly enough.

Self-conscious ecological utopianism: A perspective available in the mid to late 20th century associated with Lisa Garforth’s ideas of ecotopia. This perspective explicitly aims to politicize nature in order to critique and transform the social realm.  See ecotopia above for a description of the formal process of politicized nature as the foundation of changed society.

Landscape (as an ideological idea)

Postnatural: Ah, well, I think others should aid me in shaping this definition.

Post-environmental crisis period: Historical period identified by Lisa Garforth after the 1960′s when the idea of environmental crisis as an unavoidable  fact becomes the starting point for any environmental thinking.  Such thinking must contend with the possibilities that we either “avoid or live with environmental apocalypse.”  Alongside this acknowledgement of crisis as a baseline, such a critical perspective acknowledges a desire to reclaim a “real, unspoilt and beautiful nature” (Garforth, “Ideal Nature: Utopias of Landscape and Loss” 7)

Deep green philosophy

Ecocentrism: A critical orientation which replaces human concerns as the center of all things with environment as the starting point for consideration.

Ecologism: A critical (political) practice of ecocentrism which is apparently focused on bringing ecological issues to center stage, critiquing those discourses and practices which uncritically examine the ecological, and transforming thought and action toward ecocentric aims.

Dystopian narratives:  Those narratives which characterize a rather messy world; for our purposes, that would include a degraded environment and destructive human-environment relations, not to mention tumultuous human relationships.

Sufficiency:  A term in environmental circles meant to critique consumer culture’s obsession with material acquisition that comes at a cost to the environment, with more for the sake of more rather than an understanding of what a larger reckoning for nature might entail.  In place of such over-determined desire, the concept of sufficiency suggests measuring human need in terms of what is enough to function effectively (of course, this relative term pushes into murky waters).

Embeddedness:  Significant connection to nature as a positive value.  Such a connection can be real and/or imagined.

Light green environmentalist ethics

Processual ontology: At stake with much environmentalist thinking is the idea that definitions of the world become descriptions of static entities.  Instead, they suggest, we must begin to consider the world in its becoming, with attention to change and process.  Processual, then, refers to the ongoing quality of “things” and ontology (a term to designate issues of existence or being) under this framework builds the concept of process into existence. 

The Eden narrative: An environmental recovery narrative suggested by Carolyn Merchant.  It is a Judeo-Christian narrative which asserts that “the original oneness [with nature] is male and the Fall is caused by a female, Eve, with Adam, the innocent bystander, being forced to pay the consequences.”  Nature is figured by Eve in three stages: 1. original Eve is purity and ”potential for development” 2. fallen Eve is chaotic wasteland “requiring improvement” and 3. mother Eve is “improved garden” which nurtures.  Adam is presented as original Adam, the creator and fallen Adam, the “hero who redeems the fallen land” (all references to Cronon, Uncommon Ground 137).

Biophilia:  A term usually associated with and popularized by the biologist E. O. Wilson.  It literally tranlates as love of life.  The term is meant to suggest an inherent attraction to the living (usually nonhuman) world, an attraction which is often hoped to be the basis for a reformed relationship to that world.

Globalization

Transnationalism

Social construction-as-refutation

Denaturalization

Phenomenological constructionists

Transcendental phenomenologists

Symmetry principle

Technoscience

Discursive constructionism

Ecologically inflected localism

Restoration ecology

Biodiversity