Korte beschrijving/Annotatie

With case studies from India, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, this book highlights the ways in which religious and spiritual institutions serve as repositories of alternative ways of knowing and acting.

Tekst achterflap

How and why do religion and spirituality motivate individuals and collectivities in contemporary Asia to engage in environmental action? This question is at the heart of Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Across nine chapters, the book examines a wide range of environmental initiatives, ranging from agroecology, waste recycling and dietary change, to a broader cultivation of ecological values and ethics. With case studies from India, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, the book brings out the complex ways in which religious and spiritual institutions and movements become repositories of alternative ways of knowing and acting on the world, complementing and sometimes also providing more radical alternatives to scientific forms of reasoning and materialist modes of living. Religion and Ecological Crisis also crucially demonstrates how the power of religious and spiritual forms of environmentalism to accelerate the transformation towards more sustainable ways of producing, consuming, and living is conditioned by wider structural relationships. While there may be no immediate ecological revolutions on the horizon in the contexts and communities analyzed in this book, the case studies powerfully portray a rich landscape of collective environmental agency that points towards an ongoing search for more ecologically sustainable and ethically sound futures.

Slogan/Promotie

How and why do religion and spirituality motivate individuals and collectivities in contemporary Asia to engage in environmental action? This question is at the heart of Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Across nine chapters, the book examines a wide range of environmental initiatives, ranging from agroecology, waste recycling and dietary change, to a broader cultivation of ecological values and ethics. With case studies from India, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, the book brings out the complex ways in which religious and spiritual institutions and movements become repositories of alternative ways of knowing and acting on the world, complementing and sometimes also providing more radical alternatives to scientific forms of reasoning and materialist modes of living. Religion and Ecological Crisis also crucially demonstrates how the power of religious and spiritual forms of environmentalism to accelerate the transformation towards more sustainable ways of producing, consuming, and living is conditioned by wider structural relationships. While there may be no immediate ecological revolutions on the horizon in the contexts and communities analyzed in this book, the case studies powerfully portray a rich landscape of collective environmental agency that points towards an ongoing search for more ecologically sustainable and ethically sound futures.

Biografie

Mette Halskov Hansen is Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway, where he also heads the Centre for South Asian Democracy.

Inhoudsopgave

Table of Contents Acknowledgments; About the Authors; Introduction. Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia - Mette Halskov Hansen and Kenneth Bo Nielsen; Chapter 1. Enlisting the Divine Farmer, Shennong: Spirituality, Science and Environmentalism in Taiwan - Koen Wellens and Mette Halskov Hansen; Chapter 2. Yogic Ecology? Spirituality, Science, and Pseudoscience in Indian Agroecological Movements for Soil Health - Daniel Münster; Chapter 3. Ecopractices, Self-realization, and Interpretations of Tradition in a Chinese Ecovillage - Wengkang Qian, Zhaohui Liu, and Rune Svarverud; Chapter 4. Hòa Hảo Buddhism and the Target of Net-Zero Plastic Waste in the Mekong Delta - Nhung Lu Rots; Chapter 5. Pragmatic Environmentalism: Sikhism and Grassroots Environmental Advocacy in North India - Aase Jeanette Kvanneid; Chapter 6. “Purity at the Source”: Tzu Chi’s Organizational and Communal Storytelling about Recycling and Vegetarianism - Lu Chen and Hongtao Li; Chapter 7. Agroecology as Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context - Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Nihar Gokhale; Chapter 8. The Purest Food: Cowmilk, Transcendent Claims, and Ecological Sustainability in India - Amita Baviskar; Chapter 9. Ecologies of Gods and States: Theogenic Soils and Forests in the Blang Mountains, China - Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström; Afterword: The Jury Is Still Out - Robert Weller; Index

Details