Imagining alternative futures requires a vocabulary beyond the English language. A vocabulary that will allow us to passionately discuss today’s world and its environmental and social challenges, adequately express our concerns, feelings, and ideas, and creatively engage with new possibilities.
In An Ecotopian Lexicon, editors Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy invited 30 collaborators to contribute words from other cultures to the English language, with a view to developing a broader vocabulary for discussing environmental challenges and solutions.Karen O’Brien and Ann Kristin Schorre contributed an entry discussing the Norwegian concept of ildsjel, an expansion of the English word agency.
O’Brien and Schorre discuss the limitations of the word agency, and outline how ildsjel goes further by incorporating concepts such as passion and commitment for community empowerment. Ildsjeler are able to cultivate solidarity, participation and empowerment. The term applies both to individuals as well as groups and communities. O’Brien and Schorre say, “We need empowering expressions of humanity’s potential to contribute to a healthy world in which all can thrive. Ildsjeler have the capacity to light the fire in others and generate transformations to a more just and sustainable world.”
An Ecotopian Lexicon is available at the University of Minnesota Press or on Amazon.
Find out more about the book on its website: An Ecotopian Lexicon
Citation
O’Brien, Karen and Ann Kristin Schorre (2019). Ildsjel. Chapter 12 in M. Schneider-Mayerson and B. Bellamy and (eds.) An Ecotopian Lexicon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.