1st Edition

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia Places and Practices of Power in Changing Environments

294 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

294 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

294 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia offers a unique insight into the non-human and spiritual dimensions of environmental management in a changing world. This volume presents a comparative, place-based exploration of landscapes across Asia and the entities, practices and knowledges that inhabit them. Rather than treating sacred mountains, terrains and water sources as self-contained, esoteric... Read more

I: Introduction: Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia: Introduction

Riam Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger, David Sneath

II: Cosmopolitical Landscapes and Ecologies of Practice

1. When Lha Lu Spirits Suffer and Sometimes Fight Back: Tibetan Cosmopolitics in Times of Environmental Threats and Climate Change

Hildegard Diemberger

2. Territorial Cults in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands: Mobilizing Spirits for Local Identity and Environmental Protection

Yudru Tsomu

3. Up in Smoke: Cosmopolitical Ecologies and the Disappearing Spirits of the Land in Thailand’s Agricultural Air Pollution

Julia Cassaniti

III: Communities and Cosmos: Place-based Knowledges and Practices

4. Balancing the Sacred Landscape: Environmental Management in Limi North-Western Nepal

Astrid Hovden and Hanna Havnevik

5. ‘Mother’ Memorials and the Cosmopolitics of Environment in Buryatia

Caroline Humphrey

6. Behind the Façade: Unseen Faces of Japan

David C. Lewis

IV: Cosmopolitics and the Contemporary State

7. Knowing the Lords of the Land: Cosmopolitical Dynamics and Historical Change in Mongolia

David Sneath and Elizabeth Turk

8. Speaking of Mountain Deities Beyond the County Border: Postsocialist Cosmopolitics and State Territoriality in Inner Mongolia, China

Thomas White

9. Contesting the Chinese Taiga: Spirits, Reindeer, and Environmental Conservation in Northeast China

Richard Fraser

V: Cosmopolitical Ecologies for the 21st Century

10. Cosmopolitical ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan: Repurposing Ritual and Re-presenting Realities

Riamsara Kuyakanon and Dorji Gyeltshen

11. Sharing a Room with Sparrows: Maulana Azad and Muslim Ecological Thought

Anand Vivek Taneja

12. Druids and Jhakris: Place-based Conservation and Conversations Between Spirits and Spirit-workers from Britain and Nepal

Jonathan Woolley

VI: Afterword

13. Cosmopolitical Ecologies in Translation

Hildegard Diemberger, Riam Kuyakanon, David Sneath

Biography

Riamsara Kuyakanon is a Senior Research Associate at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK.

Hildegard Diemberger is Research Director at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit & Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK.

David Sneath is the Caroline Humphrey Professor of the Anthropology of Inner Asia at the Department of Social Anthropology and Director of the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge, UK.