China's Green Religion

Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-231-17586-9
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 237 mm x 160 mm, Gewicht: 470 g

How can Daoism, China's indigenous religion, give us the aesthetic, ethical, political, and spiritual tools to address the root causes of our ecological crisis and construct a sustainable future? In China's Green Religion, James Miller shows how Daoism orients individuals toward a holistic understanding of religion and nature. Explicitly connecting human flourishing to the thriving of nature, Daoism fosters a "green" subjectivity and agency that transforms what it means to live a flourishing life on earth.

Through a groundbreaking reconstruction of Daoist philosophy and religion, Miller argues for four key, green insights: a vision of nature as a subjective power that informs human life; an anthropological idea of the porous body based on a sense of qi flowing through landscapes and human beings; a tradition of knowing founded on the experience of transformative power in specific landscapes and topographies; and an aesthetic and moral sensibility based on an affective sensitivity to how the world pervades the body and the body pervades the world. Environmentalists struggle to raise consciousness for their cause, Miller argues, because their activism relies on a quasi-Christian concept of "saving the earth." Instead, environmentalists should integrate nature and culture more seamlessly, cultivating through a contemporary intellectual vocabulary a compelling vision of how the earth materially and spiritually supports human flourishing.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miller, James

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltpolitik, Umweltprotokoll
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Nicht-Westliche Philosophie Indische & Asiatische Philosophie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltschutz, Umwelterhaltung
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Östliche Religionen Taoismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Umwelt- und Gesundheitspolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Religion, Modernity, and Ecology2. The Subjectivity of Nature3. Liquid Ecology4. The Porosity of the Body5. The Locative Imagination6. The Political Ecology of the Daoist Body7. From Modernity to Sustainability8. From Sustainability to FlourishingNotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

James Miller is professor of Chinese studies and director of the interdisciplinary graduate program in cultural studies at Queen's University in Canada. He is the author of The Way of Highest Clarity (2008) and Daoism: A Beginner's Guide (2008) and the editor of Chinese Religions in Contemporary Societies (2006), Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China (2014), and Daoism and Ecology (2001).