Whitney A. Bauman

Kevin J. O'Brien

Richard R. Bohannon

"Religion and ecology" has arrived. What was once a niche interest for a few academics concerned with environmental issues and a few environmentalists interested in religion has become an established academic field with classic texts, graduate programs, regular meetings at academic conferences, and growing interest from other academics and the mass media. Theologians, ethicists, sociologists, and other scholars are engaged in a broad dialogue about the ways religious studies can help understand and address environmental problems, including the sorts of methodological, terminological, and substantive debates that characterize any academic discourse.This book recognizes the field that has taken shape, reflects on the ways it is changing, and anticipates its development in the future. The essays offer analyses and reflections from emerging scholars of religion and ecology, each addressing her or his own specialty in light of two questions: (1) What have we inherited from the work that has come before us? and (2) What inquiries, concerns, and conversation partners should be central to the next generation of scholarship?The aim of this volume is not to lay out a single and clear path forward for the field. Rather, the authors critically reflect on the field from within, outline some of the major issues we face in the academy, and offer perspectives that will nurture continued dialogue.

The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology

Inherited Land

Whitney Bauman

Richard Bohannon

How do religion and the natural world interact with one another? Grounding Religion introduces students to the growing field of religion and ecology, exploring a series of questions about how the religious world influences and is influenced by ecological systems. Grounding Religion examines the central concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘ecology’ using analysis, dialogical exchanges by established scholars in the field, and case studies. The first textbook to encourage critical thinking about the relationships between the environment and religious beliefs and practices, it also provides an expansive overview of the academic field of religion and ecology as it has emerged in the past forty years. The contributors introduce students to new ways of thinking about environmental degradation and the responses of religious people. Each chapter brings a new perspective on key concepts such as sustainability, animals, gender, economics, environmental justice, globalization and place. Discussion questions and contemporary case studies focusing on topics such as Muslim farmers in the US and Appalachian environmental struggles help students apply the perspective to current events, other media, and their own interests.

A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology

Grounding Religion

O'Brien Kevin J.

This detailed study of the NPC examines how it has changed from its founding under Mao through the regime of Deng Xiaoping.

China's National People's Congress and the Politics of Institutional Change

Reform Without Liberalization

On the planet Talamh, in the year 1310 of the second Common Era a young woman, who just lost her father, started a long and dangerous journey of her life. She and a newly formed adventuring company's made an attempt by sail west to open a new Sea trade route to ports of the kingdoms of the East, from the port city of Fair Haven in the kingdom of West Thorne.

New Edition

Quest of the May's Rose

Neil Jeffrey Diamant

Stanley B. Lubman

This book explores legal mobilization, culture, and institutions in contemporary China from a perspective informed by 'law and society' scholarship.

State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice

Engaging the Law in China

Climate change is viewed as a primarily scientific, economic, or political issue. While acknowledging the legitimacy of these perspectives, Kevin J. O’Brien argues that we should respond to climate change first and foremost as a case of systematic and structural violence. Global warming is largely caused by the carbon emissions of the affluent, emissions that harm the poor first and worst. Climate change is violence because it divides human beings from one another and from the earth. O’Brien offers a constructive and creative response to this violence through practical examples of activism and nonviolent peacemaking, providing brief biographies of five Christians in the United States—John Woolman, Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez. These activists’ idealism, social commitment, and political savvy offer lessons of resistance applicable to the struggle against climate change and for social justice.

Lessons of Resistance from Nonviolent Activists

The Violence of Climate Change

Emily T. Yeh

Jingzhong Ye

This collection provides an overview of China¿s rural politics, bringing scholarship on agrarian politics from various social science disciplines together in one place. The twelve contributions, spanning history, anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, political science, and geography, address enduring questions in peasant studies, including the relationship between states and peasants, taxation, social movements, rural-urban linkages, land rights and struggles, gender relations, and environmental politics. Taking rural politics as the power-inflected processes and struggles that shape access and control over resources in the countryside, as well as the values, ideologies and discourses that shape those processes, the volume brings research on China into conversation with the traditions and concerns of peasant studies scholarship. It provides both an introduction to those unfamiliar with Chinese politics, as well as in-depth, new research for experts in the field. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

Rural Politics in Contemporary China

Redemptorists in Singapore-Malaysia

It is beyond debate that human beings are the primary cause of climate change. Many think of climate change as primarily a scientific, economic, or political problem, and those perspectives inform Kevin O'Brien's analysis. But O'Brien argues that we should respond to climate change first and foremost as a case of systematic and structural violence. As he points out, global warming is primarily caused by the carbon emissions of the affluent, emissions that harm the poor first and worst. Climate change divides human beings from one another and from the earth; in short, global warming and climate change is violence. In order to sustain a constructive and creative response to this violence, he contends, society needs practical examples of activism and nonviolent peacemaking. O'Brien identifies five such examples from US history, providing brief biographies of heroic individuals whose idealism and social commitment and political savvy can model the fight against climate change and for climate justice: Quaker abolitionist John Woolman; social reformer Jane Addams; Catholic worker advocate Dorothy Day; civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; and union organizer Cesar Chavez. These moral exemplars, all of whom were motivated by their Christian faith, serve as witnesses to those seeking to make peace in response to the violence of climate change.

Kevin J. O'Brien

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