Many scholars have touched on the relationships between religion and nature since the work of late nineteenth-century anthropologists such as Edward B. Tylor. This is almost inevitable in studying some religions, especially indigenous ones. Nevertheless, only since the 1950s has anthropological research gradually been developing that is intentionally focused on the influence of religion on human ecology and adaptation, part of a recent multidisciplinary field that some call spiritual ecology (Merchant 2005; Sponsel 2001, 2005a, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; S. Taylor 2006). At last this ecological approach is beginning to receive some attention in textbooks on the anthropology of religion, ecological anthropology, human ecology, and environmental conservation, though it is still uncommon in the anthropological periodicals (Bowie 2006; Marten 2001; Merchant 2005; Russell and Harshbarger 2003; Townsend 2009). This article summarizes a sample of the growing literature and cites other sources to help facilitate the eff orts of those who may find this new subject to be of sufficient interest for further inquiry.
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Religion and Environment
Exploring Spiritual Ecology
Leslie E. Sponsel
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2010
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 131–145 (15 total)
Christianity and the City
Simmel, Space, and Urban Subjectivities
Anna Strhan
This article examines the growing scholarly interest in urban religion, situating the topic in relation to the contemporary analytical significance of cities as sites where processes of social change, such as globalization, transnationalism, and the influence of new media technologies, materialize in interrelated ways. I argue that Georg Simmel's writing on cities offers resources to draw out further the significance of “the urban” in this emerging field. I bring together Simmel's urban analysis with his approach to religion, focusing on Christianities and individuals' relations with sacred figures, and suggest this perspective opens up how forms of religious practice respond to experiences of cultural fragmentation in complex urban environments. Drawing on his analysis of individuals' engagement with the coherence of God, I explore conservative evangelicals' systems of religious intersubjectivity to show how attention to the social effects of relations with sacred figures can deepen understanding of the formation of urban religious subjectivities.
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2013
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 125–149 (25 total)
Beyond Economy and Religion
Resources and Socio-cosmic Fields in Odisha, India
Roland Hardenberg
given to it by Louis Dumont. To Dumont ([1980] 2013) , values provide an order, or ‘hierarchy’, to relations within a cultural system of non-normative representations, or ‘ideas and values’. These values differ depending on the “social environment
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 83–96 (14 total)
Book Reviews
Mariske Westendorp, Bruno Reinhardt, Reinaldo L. Román, Jon Bialecki, Alexander Agadjanian, Karen Lauterbach, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Kate Yanina DeConinck, Jack Hunter, Ioannis Kyriakakis, Magdalena Crăciun, Roger Canals, Cristina Rocha, Khyati Tripathi, Dafne Accoroni, and George Wu Bayuga
religious practices. Upon visiting the website Materializing the Bible , the first thing a visitor is confronted with is the following comment: “People do more than read Bibles. They use the written words to create material environments. What happens
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 171–196 (26 total)
The Chaco Skies
A Socio-cultural History of Power Relations
Alejandro Martín López and Agustina Altman
the cosmos to be inhabited by multiple human and non-human societies, bound together by asymmetric power relations. Due to the brightness of many of its manifestations, the celestial space is seen as an environment populated by quite powerful, fecund
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 62–78 (17 total)
The Religious Foundations of Capoeira Angola
The Cosmopolitics of an Apparently Non-religious Practice
Sergio González Varela
, as Cobra Mansa told me, capoeira was not only an art but also a form of survival skill to help face a hostile social environment. Although today this hostile environment has changed to some degree, the deceptive attitudes that capoeira leaders embody
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 79–93 (15 total)
Interaction Rituals and Religious Culture in the Tea Party
Stacy M. K. George
the Tea Party utilizes religion. In addition to establishing a moral foundation built on conservative Christian principles, the TP movement is able to create a situational environment (as described by IR theory) based on religious symbols, emotional
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 39–51 (13 total)
Religious Tourism
Analytical Routes through Multiple Meanings
Emerson Giumbelli
Translator : Jeffrey Hoff
facilities (including those of religious tourism). This is all certainly important for characterizing the forms and technologies of communication that populate certain environments and experiences. But their presence and configuration depends on the existence
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 24–38 (15 total)
The White Cotton Robe
Charisma and Clothes in Tibetan Buddhism Today
Magdalena Maria Turek
his oratory skill in imparting instructions punctuated by his perfectly timed, provocative laughter. The remote environment is another device in this spectacle of charisma. The isolated area where Tsültrim Tarchin chose to live and where he founded his
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 173–188 (16 total)
Assessing and Adapting Rituals That Reproduce a Collectivity
The Large-Scale Rituals of the Repkong Tantrists in Tibet
Nicolas Sihlé
that can lead very scripted rituals to be evaluated, fine-tuned, and sometimes even quite radically modified in order to adapt the ritual to the social environment and to achieve a major aim of a periodic collective ritual—that is, continuity. In the
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 160–175 (16 total)