Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mette Halskov Hansen ,  Kenneth Bo Nielsen
Publisher:   Leiden University Press
Imprint:   Leiden University Press
ISBN:  

9789087285081

ISBN 10:   9087285086
Pages:   230
Publication Date:   12 March 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   In Print  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

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

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Author Information

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. 

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