BA Comparative Religion and Social Anthropology

Scientists have declared that we have entered a new geological era, the anthropocene. For the first time, humans are causing profound changes to long-term geological processes—including climate change and mass extinction. Humans have always thought hard about the ethics of their relationships with animals and with the cosmos, but the crisis has forced them to think in new ways. This course will look at the resources religious traditions provide for thinking about ethics and the environment. We will examine the ways in which contemporary thinkers have variously applied, adapted and revolutionised those resources. And we will also ask to what extent religious ethics might have been to blame for the crisis, as some have alleged, and how useful it is to analyse environmentalism as a secular form of religious ethics.

 

• To introduce you to a variety of religious responses to the contemporary environmental crisis
• To encourage you to think critically about different views on the relationship between religion and environmentalism

11 x 2hr lectures 11 x 1hr seminars Information will be made available on Blackboard.

• Understand and analyse a number of competing views on the relationship between religion and environmentalism
• Explain and analyse the thought of a number of religious thinkers on the environment
• Critically evaluate the claim that environmental movements have become a form of secular religion

• Analyse primary and secondary texts on religion and the environment

• Develop effective strategies of data management in preparation for essay writing under timed conditions in an exam

• Be aware of key issues in policy debates and the relevance of ethical and religious responses to them

 

Assessment Task	Formative or Summative	Weighting
Essay	Summative	50%
Exam	Summative	50%

 

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Written feedback on essay	Summative
Written feedback on exam	Summative

 

• Bauman, W. A. and Bohannon, R. R. I. (2011). Inherited Land: The Chang- ing Grounds of Religion and Ecology. Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR
• Cruikshank, J. (2007). Do glaciers listen?: local knowledge, colonial encounters and social imagination. UBC Press, Vancouver
• Darlington, S. M. (2012). The ordination of a tree: The Thai Buddhist environmental movement. SUNY Press, New York
• Deane-Drummond, C., Bergmann, S., and Szerszynski, B. (2015). Techno- futures, Nature and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., Farnham
• Dunlap, T. R. (2006). Environmentalism, a secular faith. Environmental values, pages 321– 330
• Laidlaw, J. Ethical traditions in question: Diaspora jainism and the environmental and animal liberation movements. In Pandian, A. and Ali, D., editors, Ethical Life in South Asia, pages 61–80. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
• Sponsel, L. E. (2012). Spiritual ecology: A quiet revolution. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara
• Taylor, B. (2009). Dark green religion. UC Berkeley Press, Berkeley CA
• Tucker, M. E. and Grim, J. A. (1994). Worldviews and ecology: Religion, philoso- phy, and the environment. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY