The American Anthropological Association approved and scheduled the following session for its annual convention in Washington, D.C., in Washington Room 6 of the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel from 1:45-5:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 3, 2005.



SESSION TITLE:

"Bringing the Religious Past into the Present:

The Environmental Legacy of Religion and its Relevance for

Envisioning and Engaging our Ecological Future”

SESSION ABSTRACT:

Back in 1967, historian Lynn White, Jr., in his now classic essay in the journal Science, basically blamed the dominant interpretation of the Bible in Christianity for the world's environmental crisis. Thereby for decades he triggered a great deal of discussion and debate that led to the new field of ecological theology. In 1986, the emphasis shifted toward a more positive approach to the relationships between religions and environment during the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the World Wildlife Fund at a conference in Assisi, Italy. There representatives from several major world religions each examined their own faith to extract a green environmental ethic for their followers. Another watershed was the series of conferences organized principally by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim during the mid-1990s at Harvard University. These conferences generated ten substantial edited volumes, each on a different religion in relation to ecology, and this in turn led to the development of the Forum on Religion and Ecology as well as its awesome web site (http://environment.harvard.edu/religion).

The above and many other initiatives are part of an exciting and promising whole new field of spiritual ecology that may be defined as a complex, diverse, and flourishing arena of religious, spiritual, intellectual, and practical activities at the interface of religions on the one hand and ecology, environments, and environmentalism on the other. Within this context this session will critically review the contributions, limitations, problems, issues, and trends of anthropological research on the subject and its future needs and potentials. Some of the papers will reflect on the work of pioneer anthropologists such as Roy Rappaport while others will present case study, theoretical, and/or methodological analyses. Ultimately the pivotal question to be examined from the various perspectives of the panelists is the legacy of the impact of religion on the environment and what past and present trends portend for our ecological future.

 

PAPERS:

Leslie E. Sponsel (U Hawai`i)and Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel (Chaminade University) "Spiritual Ecology: Toward an Overview in Anthropology and Beyond"

Eugene Anderson (U California Riverside) "Magic, Science, and Religion: Useful Labels in the Past? Useless in the Future?"

Ellen Messer (Tufts U) "From Religion and Ecology to Spiritual Ecology: Making Connections through Roy Rappaport's Concept of the Sacred"

Susan Darlington (Hampshire C) "Buddhist Environmentalism: Ritualized Science and Scientific Religion"

Henry Delcore (California State U Fresno) “Buddhist Environmentalism in Thailand: Ideals and Interests”

Ann Grodzins Gold (Syracuse U) "Sacred Groves Revisited: Academic and Rajasthani Stories"

Vijaya Nagarajan (U San Francisco) "Sacred Groves as Embedded Ecological Commons: A Theoretical Exploration in Tamil Nadu, India"

Kelly D. Alley (Auburn U) "Indian River Schemes: From Pollution to Privatization"

George James (U North Texas) "Behind the Tehri Dam: Spiritual Ecology of Sunderlal Bahuguna"

Scott Schnell (U Iowa) "Angry Spirits and Mountain Gods: Mixed Metaphors of Japanese Alpine Landscape"

Michael Sheridan (U Vermont) "A New Cultural Ecology: Order and Negotiation in Tanzanian Sacred Forests"

Lynette Cruz (Hawaii Pacific U) "Spiritual and Ecological Balance in the Ahupua`a System"


DISCUSSANTS:

David L. Carmichael (U Texas El Paso)

Michael J. Winkelman (Arizona State U)

OPEN DISCUSSION:

ORGANIZER:

Leslie E. Sponsel (U Hawaii)

CHAIR:

Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel (Chaminade U)

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INTRODUCTORY PAPER ABSTRACT:

Leslie E. Sponsel (U Hawai`i)and Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel (Chaminade U) "Spiritual Ecology: Toward an Overview in Anthropology and Beyond" Since the 1980s, an accelerating number of diverse individuals and organizations at many levels of society throughout the world have turned to exploring the potential of religions to provide their followers with environmental philosophies, attitudes, values, rituals, and practices to contribute to creating more sustainable and greener communities and societies before environmental degradation reaches catastrophic thresholds for humanity and the biosphere. This fascinating and promising new environmental, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, social, and political movement has been called spiritual ecology. Paradoxically, in many respects spiritual ecology presents a radical challenge to customary ways of thinking and acting including in science and academia, but in other respects it is grounded in enduring traditions which generations of people have continued to find meaningful over many millennia. This paper provides an overview of the main sources of spiritual ecology; its contributions and limitations as well as future potential; and key resources for pursuing the subject in scientific and academic research and teaching. Thereby this paper provides a critical introduction and broader context for the analyses of specific aspects of spiritual ecology in subsequent papers and discussions in this session.