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Religion, Sustainability, and Place

Moral Geographies of the Anthropocene

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  • © 2021

Overview

Editors:
  1. Steven E. Silvern

    1. Geography and Sustainability, Salem State University, Salem, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Edward H. Davis

    1. Geography and Environmental Studies, Emory and Henry College, Emory, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Investigates how religious traditions and belief systems are contributing to academic discourse, public policy, and larger public debates over how to create, promote and achieve environmentally and socially sustainable communities
  • Explores the way in which sustainability intersects with religious belief systems, and how different religious belief traditions can contribute to the construction of ethical relationships of people, place and the planet’s ecosystems
  • Offers a diverse array of fascinating case studies from different geographic locales and from diverse religious traditions
  • Provides a platform for scholars, students and the public to re-conceptualize and re-consider how religious belief systems can inform efforts to create moral geographies and sustainable relationships between people, places and environments

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Table of contents (15 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Religion, Sustainability, and Place

    • Steven E. Silvern, Edward H. Davis
    Pages 1-13

  3. By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them: Religion as Practice

    • R. D. K. Herman
    Pages 15-40

  4. Finding/Revealing/Creating Judaism’s Indigenous Core

    • David Mevorach Seidenberg
    Pages 41-69

  5. Water Law in Muslim Countries Revisited: A Study of the Qur’an

    • James L. Wescoat Jr.
    Pages 71-96

  6. Emerging Places of Repair: A Sustainable Urbanism Approach to Living in and with Cities—Inspired by Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Agent Ontology of Place

    • Briana Meier
    Pages 97-122

  7. Saving Mount Shasta’s Sacred Water: The Spiritual Campaign Against Crystal Geyser

    • Madeline Duntley
    Pages 123-147

  8. Land Cover Change in a Ghanaian Sacred Forest

    • Madden Bremer, Stephen Young
    Pages 149-171

  9. Role of Faith-Based Social Groups in Promoting Sustainable Food Security in Nigeria

    • Stephen Morse, Nora McNamara
    Pages 173-198

  10. Protecting Ethiopia’s Church Forests: The Disconnect Between Western Science and Local Knowledge

    • Peter Klepeis
    Pages 199-224

  11. Religion and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages

    • Judit Farkas
    Pages 225-251

  12. Resource Nationalism and Spiritual Pathways to Sustainability in Kyrgyzstan

    • Vincent Artman
    Pages 253-276

  13. Grounded in Community: Christianity and Environmental Engagement in Scotland

    • Alice Hague
    Pages 277-301

  14. Christian Ideas Influencing US Food Movements

    • Edward H. Davis
    Pages 303-325

  15. The Jewish Food Movement: A Sustainable and Just Vision for Place, Identity, and Environment

    • Steven E. Silvern
    Pages 327-354

  16. A Womanist and Interfaith Response to Climate Change

    • Faith B. Harris, Kendyl Crawley Crawford
    Pages 355-381

  17. Back Matter

    Pages 383-391
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores how religious groups work to create sustainable relationships between people, places and environments. This interdisciplinary volume deepens our understanding of this relationship, revealing that the geographical imagination—our sense of place—is a key aspect of the sustainability ideas and practices of religious groups.  The book begins with a broad examination of how place shapes faith-based ideas about sustainability, with examples drawn from indigenous Hawaiians and the sacred texts of Judaism and Islam. Empirical case studies from North America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa follow, illustrating how a local, bounded, and sacred sense of place informs religious-based efforts to protect people and natural resources from threatening economic and political forces. Other contributors demonstrate that a cosmopolitan geographical imagination, viewing place as extending from the local to the global, shapes the struggles of Christian, Jewish and interfaith groupsto promote just and sustainable food systems and battle the climate crisis.

Reviews

“The book is a potentially fabulous teaching resource, especially for courses where religion is a relevant secondary variable. … The thread of chapters that take up food and sustainability … would make for an engaging module on religion, food, and sustainability. Scholars researching or teaching on the religious aspects of sustainability movements will find much on offer in this volume.” (Evan Berry, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, March 2, 2023) “The editors and authors are right to note that the field of sustainability studies has been strangely silent on the salience of religion. This volume provides exactly the right kind of intervention to this emerging and multidisciplinary field, that is one which includes a diverse range of voices, practitioners alongside academics, and focuses on a range of landscapes from Ethiopia to Scotland where religion and sustainability meet in specific problems and forms of praxis. I highly recommend it!” (Jeremy Kidwell, Department of Theology & Religion, University of Birmingham)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Geography and Sustainability, Salem State University, Salem, USA

    Steven E. Silvern

  • Geography and Environmental Studies, Emory and Henry College, Emory, USA

    Edward H. Davis

About the editors

Steven E. Silvern is Professor of Geography and Sustainability at Salem State University. His research has appeared in journals such as Political Geography, Cultural Geographies, Historical Geography, and American Indian Culture and Research Journal. He is also editor of The Northeastern Geographer.


Edward H. Davis is Professor and Chair in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Emory & Henry College in Virginia, USA. He has published extensively on rural and agricultural change in the US and Central America. Funded by the USDA, his explorations for seed savers in the Southern US led to the collection of dozens of rare heirloom Brassica varieties for the national seed bank. He serves on the board of the Geography of Religions and Belief Systems Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Religion, Sustainability, and Place

  • Book Subtitle: Moral Geographies of the Anthropocene

  • Editors: Steven E. Silvern, Edward H. Davis

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-15-7645-4Published: 15 December 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-15-7648-5Published: 16 December 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-15-7646-1Published: 14 December 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIX, 391

  • Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations, 20 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Human Geography, Regional and Cultural Studies, Religion and Society

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