Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics

Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics

Author: Philip P. Arnold

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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How do people in different cultural worlds think about relationships with nature? How do religious ideas become formative of landscape? How can indigenous traditions inform current cultural debates? This book explores ways in which religious perceptions and cultural values affect our understandings of relationships with nature and our actions in and upon the environment. Drawing on sources in literature, sacred texts, intellectual history, oral traditions, rituals and anthropological practices, the authors speak of realities in and across world regions including Africa, India, Japan and the USA. Unwilling to reduce the power of symbolic, mythic and cosmological thought, the authors highlight the shifting, illusive and perplexing aspects of the relationship between cosmology and landscape. Examining the inter-penetration of religious, environmental, and economic realities, this book includes critically positioned voices of Indigenous people on the cultural politics of ecological recovery. The authors offer a significant contribution to contemporary debates in the study of religion, nature, indigeneity and the challenges to colonialism.


Book Synopsis Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics by : Philip P. Arnold

Download or read book Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics written by Philip P. Arnold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2001 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do people in different cultural worlds think about relationships with nature? How do religious ideas become formative of landscape? How can indigenous traditions inform current cultural debates? This book explores ways in which religious perceptions and cultural values affect our understandings of relationships with nature and our actions in and upon the environment. Drawing on sources in literature, sacred texts, intellectual history, oral traditions, rituals and anthropological practices, the authors speak of realities in and across world regions including Africa, India, Japan and the USA. Unwilling to reduce the power of symbolic, mythic and cosmological thought, the authors highlight the shifting, illusive and perplexing aspects of the relationship between cosmology and landscape. Examining the inter-penetration of religious, environmental, and economic realities, this book includes critically positioned voices of Indigenous people on the cultural politics of ecological recovery. The authors offer a significant contribution to contemporary debates in the study of religion, nature, indigeneity and the challenges to colonialism.

Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics

Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics

Author: Philip P. Arnold

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781138727434

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This title was first published in 2001. How do people in different cultural worlds think about relationships with nature? How do religious ideas become formative of landscape? How can indigenous traditions inform current cultural debates? This book explores ways in which religious perceptions and cultural values affect our understandings of relationships with nature and our actions in and upon the environment. Drawing on sources in literature, sacred texts, intellectual history, oral traditions, rituals and anthropological practices, the authors speak of realities in and across world regions including Africa, India, Japan and the USA. Unwilling to reduce the power of symbolic, mythic and cosmological thought, the authors highlight the shifting, illusive and perplexing aspects of the relationship between cosmology and landscape. Examining the interpenetration of religious, environmental, and economic realities, this book includes critically positioned voices of Indigenous people on the cultural politics of ecological recovery.


Book Synopsis Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics by : Philip P. Arnold

Download or read book Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics written by Philip P. Arnold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2001. How do people in different cultural worlds think about relationships with nature? How do religious ideas become formative of landscape? How can indigenous traditions inform current cultural debates? This book explores ways in which religious perceptions and cultural values affect our understandings of relationships with nature and our actions in and upon the environment. Drawing on sources in literature, sacred texts, intellectual history, oral traditions, rituals and anthropological practices, the authors speak of realities in and across world regions including Africa, India, Japan and the USA. Unwilling to reduce the power of symbolic, mythic and cosmological thought, the authors highlight the shifting, illusive and perplexing aspects of the relationship between cosmology and landscape. Examining the interpenetration of religious, environmental, and economic realities, this book includes critically positioned voices of Indigenous people on the cultural politics of ecological recovery.

Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes

Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes

Author: Donna L. Gillette

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-10-16

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1461484065

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Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.


Book Synopsis Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes by : Donna L. Gillette

Download or read book Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes written by Donna L. Gillette and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity

Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity

Author: Ralph Haussler

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2020-07-31

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1789253349

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From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.


Book Synopsis Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity by : Ralph Haussler

Download or read book Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity written by Ralph Haussler and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.

Indigeneity and the Sacred

Indigeneity and the Sacred

Author: Fausto Sarmiento

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1785333976

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This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. Indigeneity and the Sacred explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.


Book Synopsis Indigeneity and the Sacred by : Fausto Sarmiento

Download or read book Indigeneity and the Sacred written by Fausto Sarmiento and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. Indigeneity and the Sacred explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.

Rascally Signs in Sacred Places

Rascally Signs in Sacred Places

Author: David E. Whisnant

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 0807866261

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David Whisnant provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic relationship between culture, power, and policy in Nicaragua over the last 450 years. Spanning a broad spectrum of popular and traditional expressive forms--including literature, music, film, and broadcast media--the book explores the evolution of Nicaraguan culture, its manipulation for political purposes, and the opposition to cultural policy by a variety of marginalized social and regional groups. Within the historical narrative of cultural change over time, Whisnant skillfully discusses important case studies of Nicaraguan cultural politics: the consequences of the unauthorized removal of archaeological treasures from the country in the nineteenth century; the perennial attempts by political factions to capitalize on the reputation of two venerated cultural figures, poet Ruben Dario and rebel General Augusto C. Sandino; and the ongoing struggle by Nicaraguan women for liberation from traditional gender relations. Originally published in 1995. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.


Book Synopsis Rascally Signs in Sacred Places by : David E. Whisnant

Download or read book Rascally Signs in Sacred Places written by David E. Whisnant and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Whisnant provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic relationship between culture, power, and policy in Nicaragua over the last 450 years. Spanning a broad spectrum of popular and traditional expressive forms--including literature, music, film, and broadcast media--the book explores the evolution of Nicaraguan culture, its manipulation for political purposes, and the opposition to cultural policy by a variety of marginalized social and regional groups. Within the historical narrative of cultural change over time, Whisnant skillfully discusses important case studies of Nicaraguan cultural politics: the consequences of the unauthorized removal of archaeological treasures from the country in the nineteenth century; the perennial attempts by political factions to capitalize on the reputation of two venerated cultural figures, poet Ruben Dario and rebel General Augusto C. Sandino; and the ongoing struggle by Nicaraguan women for liberation from traditional gender relations. Originally published in 1995. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Religion and Place

Religion and Place

Author: Peter Hopkins

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-09-13

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9400746849

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This unique collection highlights the importance of landscape, politics and piety to our understandings of religion and place. The geographies of religion have developed rapidly in the last couple of decades and this book provides both a conceptual framing of the key issues and debates involved, and rich illustrations through empirical case studies. The chapters span the discipline of human geography and cover contexts as diverse as veiling in Turkey, religious landscapes in rural Peru, and refugees and faith in South Africa. A number of prominent scholars and emerging researchers examine topical themes in each engaging chapter with significant foci being: religious transnationalism and religious landscapes; gendering of religious identities and contexts; fashion, faith and the body; identity, resistance and belief; immigrant identities, citizenship and spaces of belief; alternative spiritualities and places of retreat and enchantment. Together they make a series of important contributions that illuminate the central role of geography to the meaning and implications of lived religion, public piety and religious embodiment. As such, this collection will be of much interest to researchers and students working on topics relating to religion and place, including human geographers, sociologists, religious studies and religious education scholars.


Book Synopsis Religion and Place by : Peter Hopkins

Download or read book Religion and Place written by Peter Hopkins and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique collection highlights the importance of landscape, politics and piety to our understandings of religion and place. The geographies of religion have developed rapidly in the last couple of decades and this book provides both a conceptual framing of the key issues and debates involved, and rich illustrations through empirical case studies. The chapters span the discipline of human geography and cover contexts as diverse as veiling in Turkey, religious landscapes in rural Peru, and refugees and faith in South Africa. A number of prominent scholars and emerging researchers examine topical themes in each engaging chapter with significant foci being: religious transnationalism and religious landscapes; gendering of religious identities and contexts; fashion, faith and the body; identity, resistance and belief; immigrant identities, citizenship and spaces of belief; alternative spiritualities and places of retreat and enchantment. Together they make a series of important contributions that illuminate the central role of geography to the meaning and implications of lived religion, public piety and religious embodiment. As such, this collection will be of much interest to researchers and students working on topics relating to religion and place, including human geographers, sociologists, religious studies and religious education scholars.

Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels

Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels

Author: Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780865437074

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How do Africans conceive space? How are places constructed and imagined? How do the conceptions, constructions, imaginings of spaces and places affect, and in turn are affected by, social, economic and political change. These are some of the questions answered in this, the first book of its kind to address systematically the themes of of space and spatiality.


Book Synopsis Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels by : Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Download or read book Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels written by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and published by Africa World Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Africans conceive space? How are places constructed and imagined? How do the conceptions, constructions, imaginings of spaces and places affect, and in turn are affected by, social, economic and political change. These are some of the questions answered in this, the first book of its kind to address systematically the themes of of space and spatiality.

Claiming Sacred Ground

Claiming Sacred Ground

Author: Adrian J. Ivakhiv

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2001-07-26

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9780253108388

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Claiming Sacred Ground Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona Adrian J. Ivakhiv A study of people and politics at two New Age spiritual sites. In this richly textured account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places into an expanding global cultural economy. Ivakhiv sees these contested and "heterotopic" landscapes as the nexus of a complex web of interestes and longings: from millennial anxieties and nostalgic re-imaginings of history and prehistory; to real-estate power grabs; contending religious visions; and the free play of ideas from science, pseudo-science, and popular culture. Looming over all this is the nonhuman life of these landscapes, an"otherness" that alternately reveals and conceals itself behind a pagenant of beliefs, images, and place-myths. A significant contribution to scholarship on alternative spirituality, sacred space, and the politics of natural landscapes, Claiming Sacred Ground will interest scholars and students of environmental and cultural studies, and the sociology of religious movements and pilgrimage. Non-specialist readers will be stimulated by the cultural, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of extraordinary natural landscapes. Adrian Ivakhiv teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, and is President of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada. April 2001 384 pages, 24 b&w photos, 2 figs., 9 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append. cloth 0-253-33899-9 $37.40 s / £28.50 Contents I DEPARTURES 1 Power and Desire in Earth's Tangled Web 2 Reimagining Earth 3 Orchestrating Sacred Space II Glastonbury 4 Stage, Props, and Players of Avalon 5 Many Glastonburys: Place-Myths and Contested Spaces III SEDONA 6 Red Rocks to Real Estate 7 New Agers, Vortexes, and the Sacred Landscape IV ARRIVALS 8 Practices of Place: Nature and Heterotopia Beyond the New Age


Book Synopsis Claiming Sacred Ground by : Adrian J. Ivakhiv

Download or read book Claiming Sacred Ground written by Adrian J. Ivakhiv and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-26 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claiming Sacred Ground Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona Adrian J. Ivakhiv A study of people and politics at two New Age spiritual sites. In this richly textured account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places into an expanding global cultural economy. Ivakhiv sees these contested and "heterotopic" landscapes as the nexus of a complex web of interestes and longings: from millennial anxieties and nostalgic re-imaginings of history and prehistory; to real-estate power grabs; contending religious visions; and the free play of ideas from science, pseudo-science, and popular culture. Looming over all this is the nonhuman life of these landscapes, an"otherness" that alternately reveals and conceals itself behind a pagenant of beliefs, images, and place-myths. A significant contribution to scholarship on alternative spirituality, sacred space, and the politics of natural landscapes, Claiming Sacred Ground will interest scholars and students of environmental and cultural studies, and the sociology of religious movements and pilgrimage. Non-specialist readers will be stimulated by the cultural, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of extraordinary natural landscapes. Adrian Ivakhiv teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, and is President of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada. April 2001 384 pages, 24 b&w photos, 2 figs., 9 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append. cloth 0-253-33899-9 $37.40 s / £28.50 Contents I DEPARTURES 1 Power and Desire in Earth's Tangled Web 2 Reimagining Earth 3 Orchestrating Sacred Space II Glastonbury 4 Stage, Props, and Players of Avalon 5 Many Glastonburys: Place-Myths and Contested Spaces III SEDONA 6 Red Rocks to Real Estate 7 New Agers, Vortexes, and the Sacred Landscape IV ARRIVALS 8 Practices of Place: Nature and Heterotopia Beyond the New Age

Sacred Language, Ordinary People

Sacred Language, Ordinary People

Author: N. Haeri

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2003-01-03

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0230107370

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The cultures and politics of nations around the world may be understood (or misunderstood) in any number of ways. For the Arab world, language is the crucial link for a better understanding of both. Classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab states although it is not spoken as a mother tongue by any group of Arabs. As the language of the Qur'an, it is also considered to be sacred. For more than a century and a half, writers and institutions have been engaged in struggles to modernize Classical Arabic in order to render it into a language of contemporary life. What have been the achievements and failures of such attempts? Can Classical Arabic be sacred and contemporary at one and the same time? This book attempts to answer such questions through an interpretation of the role that language plays in shaping the relations between culture, politics, and religion in Egypt.


Book Synopsis Sacred Language, Ordinary People by : N. Haeri

Download or read book Sacred Language, Ordinary People written by N. Haeri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-01-03 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultures and politics of nations around the world may be understood (or misunderstood) in any number of ways. For the Arab world, language is the crucial link for a better understanding of both. Classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab states although it is not spoken as a mother tongue by any group of Arabs. As the language of the Qur'an, it is also considered to be sacred. For more than a century and a half, writers and institutions have been engaged in struggles to modernize Classical Arabic in order to render it into a language of contemporary life. What have been the achievements and failures of such attempts? Can Classical Arabic be sacred and contemporary at one and the same time? This book attempts to answer such questions through an interpretation of the role that language plays in shaping the relations between culture, politics, and religion in Egypt.