Description
Book SynopsisHow can religion help to understand and contend with the challenges of climate change? Understanding Climate Change through Religious Lifeworld, edited by David Haberman, presents a unique collection of essays that detail how the effects of human-related climate change are actively reshaping religious ideas and practices, even as religious groups and communities endeavor to bring their traditions to bear on mounting climate challenges. People of faith from the low-lying islands of the South Pacific to the glacial regions of the Himalayas are influencing how their communities understand earthly problems and develop meaningful responses to them. This collection focuses on a variety of different aspects of this critical interaction, including the role of religion in ongoing debates about climate change, religious sources of environmental knowledge and how this knowledge informs community responses to climate change, and the ways that climate change is in turn driving religious change.
Trade ReviewThis anthology will be valuable for scholars interested in religion, climate communication, and Indigenous cultures. The book, or selected chapters from it, would be appropriate for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses in anthropology, area studies, environmental studies, and religion.
-- Cybelle Shattuck - Western Michigan University * H-Environment *
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction: Multiple Perspectives on an Increasingly Uncertain World
Recombinant Responses
1. Climate Change Never Travels Alone
2. Climate Change, Moral Meteorology and Local Measures at Quyllurit'i, a High Andean Shrine
3. Religious Explanations for Coastal Erosion in Narikoso, Fiji
Local Knowledge
4. "Nature Can Heal Itself"
5. Maya Cosmology and Contesting Climate Change in Mesoamerica
6. Anthropogenic Climate Change, Anxiety, and the Sacred
Loss, Anxiety, and Doubt
7. The Vanishing of Father White Glacier
8. Loss and Recovery in the Himalayas
Religious Transformations
9. Angry Gods and Raging Rivers
10. Recasting the Sacred
Conclusion: Religion and Climate Change
List of Contributors
Index
