Definition of "pastoralism" [pastoralism]

• The quality or state of being pastoral. Used especially of a literary work. (noun)
• A social and economic system based on the raising and herding of livestock. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In this he'll recognize a strange variation, but a variation all the same, on the good old "pastoralism" — inherited from eighteenth-century English landscape architecture — that played such a large role in the formation of American ideology."
• "Your post and subsequent comments on "pastoralism" are certainly thought provoking."
• "Pastorals of the most interesting kind actually exist in literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of"