Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia
Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia

Author: Riamsara Kuyakanon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-25

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1000482308

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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 religious phenomena, the authors consider them within critical 'cosmopolitical ecologies' framings in which non-human entities are engaged as actors in the socio-political arena. The chapters include case studies of healing springs recognized by governments, and sacred mountains that are addressed by heads of states and Communist Party cadres, or that speak to the faithful through spirit mediums in a politics of re-enchantment. Contributors explore the diverse ways in which non-human entities such as forest spirits, reindeer, mountains and Buddhist Masters of the Land are engaged by humans to navigate environmental change and address a range of ecological threats from large-scale mining to climate change. Cosmopolitical ecologies approaches encompass the healing power of topography as well as transformative intimacies with other-than-human beings such as sparrows within an Islamic eco-theological poetic setting. In this light the book observes dynamic and creative processes of cosmological innovation including the repurposing of ritual to address challenges such as the Covid-19 epidemic. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment and society across disciplinary perspectives in general, and to anthropologists, human geographers, political ecologists, indigenous studies, area studies, environmental sciences and environmental humanities scholars in particular. The Introduction to this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America
The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America

Author: Rachel C. Lee

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014-12-05

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1479817716

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Addresses this central question: if race has been settled as a legal or social construction and not as biological fact, why do Asian American artists, authors, and performers continue to scrutinize their body parts?

Plural Ecologies in Southeast Asia
Plural Ecologies in Southeast Asia

Author: Timo Duile

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 100088693X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book draws on ethnographic studies in Southeast Asia to provide new insights into human–environmental relationships and ecologies, together with a set of theoretical innovations. Contextualizing ecologies in this region as pluralizing or hegemonic, conflictive or cooperative, the case studies in these chapters bring into dialogue ontological approaches, the issue of distinct worldviews and concepts of nature on the one hand and political ecology and power relations on the other. They discuss plural ecologies in diverse settings, reaching from urban Vietnam to the Javanese coast and the dense forests of the Southeast Asian highlands. Southeast Asia is one of the most biodiverse and culturally diverse regions in the world. Thus, what occurs in this region is vitally important to the future of Earth. Documenting the plurality and dynamics of ecologies in Southeast Asia, this book provides prime examples for the potentials of alternative human–environmental relationships and sustainable development. It will be of interest to academics studying political ecology, environmental anthropology, sustainability sciences, political sciences, development studies, human geography, human ecology, Southeast Asian studies, and Asian studies.

An Ecology of World Literature
An Ecology of World Literature

Author: Alexander Beecroft

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2015-01-06

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1781687293

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What is a literature? How do literatures of different countries interact with each other? In this groundbreaking study, Alexander Beecroft develops a new way of thinking about world literature. Drawing on a series of examples and case studies, the book ranges from ancient epic to the contemporary fiction of Roberto Bolao and Amitav Ghosh. Beecroft identifies a series of literary ecologies, from small-scale societies to the planet as a whole, within which literary texts are produced and circulated. An Ecology of World Literature places in dialogue scholarship on ancient and modern, western and non-western texts, producing new and unexpected demands for literary study.

Cosmopolitan Asia
Cosmopolitan Asia

Author: Sharmani Patricia Gabriel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1317372158

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One key concept in the large body of scholarship concerned with theorizing social relations is the idea of 'cosmopolitanism'. This book unpacks the idea of cosmopolitanism through the linked knowledges of the Global South. It brings into dialogue an inter-disciplinary team of local and transnational scholars who examine various temporal, cultural, spatial and political contexts in countries as different, yet connected, as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The book also considers a wide range of subjects – present and historical, real, as represented in literature and in theatre, and as theorized in philosophy – across these diverse contexts, but always focusing on regions and places where inter-Asian intermingling has taken place. The conclusions arrived at are varied and considerably enrich social theorizing. The book reveals a cosmopolitanism that is much more specifically Asian than the cosmopolitanism usually associated with the West, demonstrates how concepts of 'nation', 'local' and 'globalization' play out in practice in Asian settings, and re-examines concepts such as migration, diaspora, and the construction of identities. The book has much to offer scholars engaged in history, literary studies, anthropology and cultural studies.

Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen 文
Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen 文

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-05-30

Total Pages: 631

ISBN-13: 9004529446

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sheldon Pollock’s work on the history of literary cultures in the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ broke new ground in the theorization of historical processes of vernacularization and served as a wake-up call for comparative approaches to such processes in other translocal cultural formations. But are his characterizations of vernacularization in the Sinographic Sphere accurate, and do his ideas and framework allow us to speak of a ‘Sinographic Cosmopolis’? How do the special typology of sinographic writing and associated technologies of vernacular reading complicate comparisons between the Sankrit and Latinate cosmopoleis? Such are the questions tackled in this volume. Contributors are Daehoe Ahn, Yufen Chang, Wiebke Denecke, Torquil Duthie, Marion Eggert, Greg Evon, Hoduk Hwang, John Jorgensen, Ross King, David Lurie, Alexey Lushchenko, Si Nae Park, John Phan, Mareshi Saito, and S. William Wells.

Risky Futures
Risky Futures

Author: Olga Ulturgasheva

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-08-12

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1800735944

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The volume examines complex intersections of environmental conditions, geopolitical tensions and local innovative reactions characterising ‘the Arctic’ in the early twenty-first century. What happens in the region (such as permafrost thaw or methane release) not only sweeps rapidly through local ecosystems but also has profound global implications. Bringing together a unique combination of authors who are local practitioners, indigenous scholars and international researchers, the book provides nuanced views of the social consequences of climate change and environmental risks across human and non-human realms.

Pollination Ecology and the Rain Forest
Pollination Ecology and the Rain Forest

Author: David Roubik

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0387271619

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The groundbreaking canopy-access and rain forest research at Lambir Hills National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia, has contributed an immense body of knowledge. Its major studies over more than a decade are synthesized here for the first time.

Wonder in South Asia
Wonder in South Asia

Author: Tulasi Srinivas

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2023-11-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1438495293

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The experience of wonder—encompassing awe, bewilderment, curiosity, excitement, fear, dread, mystery, perplexity, reverence, surprise, and supplication—and the ineffable quality of that which is wondrous have been entwined in religion and human experience. Yet strangely, wonder in non-western societies, including South Asia, has rarely been acknowledged or understood. This groundbreaking volume brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the place and meaning of wonder in such varied joyful, tense, and creative sites and moments as Sufi music performances in Gujarat, Tamil graveyard processions, trans women's charitable practices, Kipling's Orientalist tales, village Kuchipudi dance performances, and Rajasthani healing shrines. Offering a synthetic and scholarly reading of wonder that speaks to the political, aesthetic, and ethical worlds of South Asia, these essays redefine the nature and meaning of wonder and its worlds. Taken together, they provide an invaluable research tool for those in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context, and South Asian religions in particular.

Places of Nature in Ecologies of Urbanism
Places of Nature in Ecologies of Urbanism

Author: Anne Rademacher

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 9888390597

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

If twenty-first-century urbanization is understood as a problem, its regional epicenter is the cities in Asia. Facing unprecedented diversity in scale, scope, and environmental dynamics in the Asian urban experience, scholars will need an approach that can truly capture the significance of place and context. The challenge, as this volume illustrates, can be met by the analytic of ecologies of urbanism. Eschewing a rigid, single ecology, the contributors identify multiple forms of nature—in biophysical, cultural, and political terms—that have discernable impact on power relations and human social action. The case studies in this book—including leopards in Mumbai, a network of tubewells in northern India, an island that grows through reclamation in Hong Kong, and a railway continuum linking Khon Kaen and Bangkok—all attest to the versatility of ecologies of urbanism. Guided by urban processes rather than geopolitical boundaries, Places of Nature in Ecologies of Urbanism offers a picture of urban Asia that is composed of varied ecologies of urbanism. “This intellectually adventurous work displays a deep cultural-ethical sensibility in its close attention to geographically variegated forms of place making. A first-rate contribution to urban scholarship on Asia and beyond.” —Vinay K. Gidwani, Department of Geography, Environment and Society and Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota “This volume derives from a several-year collaborative effort to bring scholars from different disciplines together to reflect on the constructed, shifting, and contested meanings of the forward-slash separating Urban/Natures. The essays in this volume are bold, rigorous, original, and sometimes even witty. Without losing track of the intellectual genealogies that enable their collective effort, the authors in Places of Nature in Ecologies of Urbanism give us new tools for imagining urban Asia’s possible futures.” —William Glover, Department of History, University of Michigan