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	<title>sustainable china &#187; Opinion</title>
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	<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info</link>
	<description>researching religious values for ecological sustainability</description>
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		<title>religion, ecology and nationalism</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/12/02/religion-ecology-and-nationalism/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/12/02/religion-ecology-and-nationalism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:39:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bhutan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nationalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=473</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Should environmentalists support conservation projects that also serve to bolster right wing nationalist agendas? This was one of the questions that was discussed last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, in San Francisco. I spoke on a panel organized by the Religion and Ecology section which featured a vibrant discussion on this very issue. One of the key points of discussion that came up was the way in which the alliance of religion and ecology is not necessarily compatible with left / liberal politics. In North America we tend to associate environmental issues with left / liberal politics, and religious organizations that advocate on behalf of environmental issues similarly tend to get associated with those similar politics. As an example of this, at the Forum on Religion and Ecology lunch just a few days earlier, it was quite evident from the conversation that scholars involved in environmental issues largely fell into the left / liberal camp. But just because this is the normative cultural expectation in North America does not necessarily make this the case everywhere else in the world. George James from the University of North Texas, for instance, noted the way in which the [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>&#8220;best to be like water&#8221;: tsunamis, religion and non-human agency</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/04/04/best-to-be-like-water-tsunamis-religion-and-non-human-agency/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/04/04/best-to-be-like-water-tsunamis-religion-and-non-human-agency/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Apr 2011 23:07:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[non-human agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tsunami]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wuwei]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=444</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s been three weeks since the devastating tsunami in Japan, and I am still haunted by the familiar phrase from Daode jing ch. 8: Best to be like water, Which benefits the ten thousand things And does not contend. It pools where humans disdain to dwell, Close to the Tao. (Trans. Addis and Lombardo, Hackett: 1993). For those devastated by tsuanmis, floods and other water disasters, to make an analogy between goodness and water seems at the very least grotesque. In what sense can the wild and untameable powers of nature be used as an analogy for what&#8217;s best? In English, such natural disasters are often referred to as &#8220;acts of God&#8221;, meaning that they are far beyond the power of humans to grasp, and essentially mysterious and unknowable. Insurance companies may refuse to cover such &#8220;acts of God&#8221; because they represent risks that are so enormous and so incalculable that they resist any attempt to bring them within a familiar economic rationality. An &#8220;act of God&#8221; is simply beyond human comprehension. Although ancient Chinese philosophers did not, so far as I know, have any experience of the devastation brought by tsunamis, they were undoubtedly aware of the dangerous power [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>consumptionomics: asia&#8217;s role in reshaping capitalism and saving the planet</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/02/07/consumptionomics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/02/07/consumptionomics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:48:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=421</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last year I wrote an article for atlantic-community.org on China&#8217;s quest for ecological sustainability. The basic point that I tried to make was that China has to create its own model for development because China simply will not be able to function as a country if its nearly 1.4 billion people expand their ecological footprint to the same level as that of North American societies. I am not arguing that China must not develop its economy. Rather I am arguing that it must develop its economy in a radically new way and not slavishly copy the pattern of development that the West has established. I&#8217;m pleased to note that a similar argument has now been made but fleshed out in much more detail, by Chandran Nair, founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a &#8220;social venture think tank.&#8221; The book has already been reviewed by the Financial Times and I&#8217;m very interested to read it. It hasn&#8217;t yet been published in North America, but I&#8217;ve ordered a copy from Amazon. According to the FT&#8217;s Hugh Carnegy, Nair is adamant that nothing good will come to any of us if success in the new economies of the east is defined by [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>green china rising</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/01/06/green-china-rising/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/01/06/green-china-rising/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:18:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=416</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As the trailer for this new documentary from Mandarin Films makes clear, the global environmental crisis will be solved in China, not in America, for the simple reason that China has no other option. As I noted recently in my post on ecological civilization in China, there is a widespread recognition in China that the paradigm of industrial civilization must be changed so that China can bring economic development to its people without a correspondingly large increase in its ecological footprint. The interesting point made in the trailer is that the failure of the Copenhagen summit points simply to the fact that China cannot wait for the world to get its act together. Rather, China can rely only on itself. In fact, this is not a new theme in modern Chinese history. Maoism was famous for its voluntaristic spirit, in which the efforts of the people were called upon to prevail against all obstacles to building the new China. Moreover, China&#8217;s enormous economic and political engagement with Africa and Latin America at present is a continuation of the paradigm developed after the Sino-Soviet split, when China saw itself isolated from both cold war superpowers. For rapidly developing countries such as China, [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/01/06/green-china-rising/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>sustainability as cultural and psychological transformation</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/12/19/sustainability-as-cultural-and-psychological-transformation/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/12/19/sustainability-as-cultural-and-psychological-transformation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:32:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=408</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a fascinating article on metaphors for progressive politics, George Lakoff summarizes succinctly the message that progressives need to be communicating as regards the issue of sustainability: The economic crisis and the ecological crisis are the same crisis. It has been caused by short-term greed. I fully agree that the economic crisis and the ecological crisis are deeply interrelated, and that we must overcome the stupid political divide of &#8220;economy&#8221; versus &#8220;environment.&#8221; The issue here is how to overcome short-term thinking: how do you get people to think longer, deeper and further than their own immediate context? This demands a cultural revolution and a psychological revolution, because sustainability at its heart involves a different way of imagining oneself in the world. It involves: Imagining oneself not as an autonomous individual but as part of an ecosystem Imagining oneself to occupy a duration in time that extends deep into the grave and far into the future Imagining oneself to be a world that extends deeply in space and time beyond one’s own body Sustainability requires people to broaden the context in which they make decisions. It involves their feeling beyond the narrow context of their immediate place in the world so [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/12/19/sustainability-as-cultural-and-psychological-transformation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>ecological civilization</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/11/19/ecological-civilization-2/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/11/19/ecological-civilization-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:44:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecological civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=385</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was in Beijing and Tianjin recently for a week of conferences related to &#8220;ecological civilization&#8221; (shengtai wenming 生态文明) an important new buzzword, the precise meaning of which thought leaders and government officials are vying to define. The first conference I attended was one on &#8220;Traditional Culture and Ecological Civilization&#8221;, held in conjunction with the Beijing branch of the Chinese society for the study of the Yijing. The conference was a curious mix of academics, Daoists, fengshui practitioners and Yijing enthusiasts. From an intellectual point of view, one of the most interesting and radical presentations came from Lu Feng 卢风, a Tsinghua University philosophy professor. His talk began with the bold claim that the era of industrial civilization was at an end, and that to usher in a new era of ecological civilization demanded nothing short of a &#8220;civilization revolution 文明革命&#8221; (in Chinese, just one character different from &#8220;cultural revolution 文化革命&#8221;). In his view, it is necessary to overhaul the intellectual foundations on which our present industrial civilization, and our model of industrial development, are based. In his analysis, ecological civilization represents not just a development of the modern industrial paradigm, but a radical transformation. This view was not universally [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/11/19/ecological-civilization-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>chinese religions and economic sustainability</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/07/19/chinese-religions-and-economic-sustainability/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/07/19/chinese-religions-and-economic-sustainability/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:00:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=365</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In Sunday&#8217;s New York Times, Wayne Arnold published a column on the perennial topic &#8220;rethinking the measure of growth.&#8221; The story concerns attempts by Asian economists to come up with alternatives to GDP growth as the be-all and end-all of development. As is often the case with the New York Times, I found the most important information buried towards the end of the story, as though the editors didn&#8217;t actually think it was important! What is needed instead, some economists say, is a wholesale re-examination of development’s goals. &#8230; Beijing, at least, appears to have gotten the message, if its investments in green technology and public transportation are anything to go by. The Communist Party has also revised the promotion criteria for officials so that environmental conditions are included along with gross domestic product. It&#8217;s hard to underestimate the significance of this type of policy measure in China. To gain official promotion in China does not simply result in greater financial  rewards or abstract &#8220;prestige&#8221; but rather access to powerful social networks that can result in very real financial, social, and personal rewards. To make this privilege conditional upon an official&#8217;s meeting environmental targets, is thus a significant way that [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/07/19/chinese-religions-and-economic-sustainability/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>daoism&#8217;s quest for relevance</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/06/25/daoisms-quest-for-relevance/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/06/25/daoisms-quest-for-relevance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:16:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spirituality]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=360</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a Wall Street Journal blog today, Christopher Carothers asks, &#8220;Is Daoism is losing its way?&#8221; He writes: Today, Buddhism is regaining its traditional place as the largest religion in Chinese society. Islam is expanding through the growth of Muslim families in the Hui and Uyghur minority ethnic groups. Protestantism and Catholicism are winning new converts all over China and shaking off the old label of “foreign religion.” Daoism, on the other hand, seems to be standing still. Worse still, he argues, Daoism is often ridiculed by other religions, as was the case in the recent incident in Singapore, in which a Christian pastor was forced to apologize for his anti-Daoist remarks. Singapore has strict rules concerning public speech about religion, so one can only imagine what anti-Daoist sentiments are being expressed in countries without such restrictions on free speech. Carothers offers a reason for this reported decline, quoting unnamed researchers who say &#8220;the main reasons for Daoism’s troubles are its poor social networking and the lack of available information about its teachings.&#8221; This reason deserves further explanation. It&#8217;s certainly true that Daoism is a lineage-based tradition which prizes knowledge and training that are passed on orally from teacher to [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/06/25/daoisms-quest-for-relevance/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>new directions in religion and nature</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/06/08/new-directions-in-religion-and-nature/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/06/08/new-directions-in-religion-and-nature/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:27:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[research]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=353</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was in LA last weekend to attend the Sixth Annual Conference on Daoist Studies which was organized by my former teacher, Livia Kohn, and LMU Professor Robin Wang. The conference drew the usual mix of academics and practitioners (which was itself the subject of an interesting meta-analysis by Elijah Siegler). My rationale for attending the conference, however, was that one of its focus themes was religion and ecology. I wanted to see how far the field had evolved since I co-edited the first book on this topic, Daoism and Ecology, Ways within a Cosmic Landscape, in 2001, and I&#8217;m delighted to report that there has been some excellent progress. The majority of essays in that volume, nearly a decade old now, focussed on correlations between environmental concepts and philosophical and religious concepts in the Daoist tradition. Some focussed more on cultural practices such as fengshui or meditation, but there was generally a lack of historical detail and also theoretical innovation. But it was the first stab at creating such a field, so one can&#8217;t be too critical. On the other hand, the papers presented at this year&#8217;s conference revealed a greater emphasis on historical detail and also a willingness [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/06/08/new-directions-in-religion-and-nature/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<title>avatar vs. confucius</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/02/02/avatar-vs-confucius/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/02/02/avatar-vs-confucius/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:56:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Confucianism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economic development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urbanization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=331</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What do you do, as a Chinese film board, when the Hollywood science fiction film Avatar smashes Chinese box office records in its first three weeks in theaters, when online chat sites are buzzing about the uncanny parallels between the fictional film plot of developers raping the land and forcibly evicting the people and real life in China? As this report makes clear, Avatar vs. Confucius in China, some Chinese netizens are calling for a boycott of the Confucius biopic, arguing that the government is only promoting Confucianism in order to help suppress political dissent. In contrast Avatar is seen by Chinese people as a fable regarding the power of the state over local communities: “What is ‘Avatar’ about?” asked one contributor on the Web site Mop. “It’s about the government’s forced evictions of people, and about them risking their lives to protest. No Chinese director dares to touch this topic. The report goes on to note that an estimated 30 million people, that&#8217;s nearly the entire population of Canada, have been evicted or relocated during China&#8217;s rapid economic development. On top of this China has an estimated &#8220;floating population&#8221; of some 100 million migrant workers who live in poor conditions on [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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