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	<title>sustainable china &#187; ecology</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>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/12/02/religion-ecology-and-nationalism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>the religion and ecology of the blang minority nationality</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/08/16/religion-and-ecology-in-blang-minority-nationality/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/08/16/religion-and-ecology-in-blang-minority-nationality/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:29:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fieldwork]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=462</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The question of how to promote a culture of ecological sustainability in China took me this summer to conduct exploratory fieldwork among the Blang minority nationality, in Yunnan province, close to the border between China and Myanmar. The Blang are one of China&#8217;s smaller nationality groups and occupy a remote mountainous terrain that is a gruelling and dangerous three-hour drive from the county town of Menghai. The economy of the Blang village where I stayed was based increasingly on the production of tea. Previously subsistence farmers, the villagers had now turned almost exclusively to the production of tea leaves which, when processed, become the famous and expensive pu&#8217;er tea. Since the economic and land reforms after the cultural revolution, the villagers had been steadily converting their lands to the production of tea, with tea bushes now dominating the steeply-terraced mountainsides. After harvesting the tea leaves, the villagers dry and lightly roast the tea leaves before selling them via middlemen to nearby tea factories that ferment, process and package the finished product. The village is distinguished by well-preserved social customs: villagers are divided into a number of exogamous clans; newly married men live in their wife&#8217;s family&#8217;s home for three years; [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/08/16/religion-and-ecology-in-blang-minority-nationality/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>daoism and technological innovation</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/02/14/daoism-and-innovation/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/02/14/daoism-and-innovation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:23:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[innovation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=431</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As China overtakes Japan to be recognized as the world&#8217;s second largest economy, it is inevitable that Chinese religions will undergo change and transformation. But since Marx infamously compared the social function of religion to that of a narcotic, religion has consistently been framed in the modern imagination as backwards, anti-modern, and anti-science. China&#8217;s modernizers, likewise, have viewed religion as a problem to be overcome in the quest to build the new China, and their view has become part of the mainstream amongst Chinese youth. In Chinese Religions in Contemporary Societies, I told a story about a lecture that I gave in Shanghai several years ago: one of the students was shocked to learn that I studied Chinese religions, and asked me, incredulously, why on earth someone would spend time studying China&#8217;s religions! Of course it is entirely ironic that the divisive narrative that frames religion as part of the past has also been taken up by some religious institutions who would seek to return human civilization to some mythic ideal that most likely never existed as an empirical fact. Fundamentalists and secular modernists often share the same framework about the absolute disjunction between modernity and science on the one hand, [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/02/14/daoism-and-innovation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</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>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>daoist religion and ecotourism: a visit to maoshan</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/09/02/daoist-religion-and-ecotourism-a-visit-to-maoshan/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/09/02/daoist-religion-and-ecotourism-a-visit-to-maoshan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:51:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fieldwork]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=373</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In May this year I had the opportunity to visit Maoshan (Mt. Mao) a Daoist mountain sacred to the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) tradition of Daoism that I studied in my most recent book. Located in Jiangsu province, it is about an hour&#8217;s bus ride south of Zhenjiang, a stop on the main high speed railway from Shanghai to Nanjing. I was interested to visit Maoshan not only because of my historical research, but because it was the site of the Maoshan declaration, which in 2008 committed China&#8217;s Daoist Association to a ten year program of ecological protection. The result of my visit is a mixed assessment of the possibilities and problems associated with the practical implementation of Daoism and ecology. I&#8217;ll be presenting the full details of my conclusions at the forthcoming SASASAAS conference at Furman University on September 24-25, but I&#8217;d like to present some key findings now. First of all, the encounter between Daoism  and Ecology has to be understood from the perspective of China&#8217;s engagement with modernity and especially science. &#8220;Ecology&#8221; in Chinese does not signify a Romantic attachment to nature undefiled by human habitation, but rather a modern, scientific and ultimately technological enterprise. To make Daoist [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/09/02/daoist-religion-and-ecotourism-a-visit-to-maoshan/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<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>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>china&#8217;s greatest contribution to sustainable development</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:39:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aesthetics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainable development]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This week I&#8217;m at a conference on eco-aesthetics at Shu Yen University in Hong Kong. Today we heard the opening speech from Prof. ZENG Fangren, the former president of Shandong University. He runs a research institute on aesthetics, and is one of China&#8217;s leading scholars of eco-aesthetics. In his overview of the field of eco-aesthetics in China, the lasting impression that I received was how the government&#8217;s advocacy of &#8220;ecological civilization&#8221; has had a profound impact on the field. As a result of this leadership, more and more scholars are devoting attention to ecological issues. What fascinated me about his talk was how fluent he was in Western scholarship regarding aesthetics and philosophy. It seems that so often dialogue between China and the west is one-sided, with all Chinese scholars mastering Western discourse and very few Western scholars mastering Chinese discourse. As a result, in the discussions following his presentation, I asked the question of what China can contribute to the world in the areas of eco-aesthetics and sustainability. His first answer was not what I expected. Rather than discussing Chinese wisdom, Confucian philosophy or Daoism, he made a very simple but powerful point. If China can manage its economic [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>china must talk to its religious leaders to create a culture of ecological sustainability</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/09/25/china-must-talk-to-its-religious-leaders-to-create-a-culture-of-ecological-sustainability/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/09/25/china-must-talk-to-its-religious-leaders-to-create-a-culture-of-ecological-sustainability/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:33:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pan Yue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the past sixty years China has achieved something close to a miracle when compared with other developing nations. It by and large manages to feed, educate, house and employ its own people. It is not involved in futile and costly military conflicts. It is a creditor nation, not a debtor. Its social and political system provides sufficient stability for the vast majority of its people to pursue their own livelihoods in a rational and predictable way.Yet all this will be lost if the world does not help China to embrace an ecologically sustainable culture. The reason for this is simple. With a population of 1.4 billion, China simply cannot afford to expand its per capita ecological footprint to the level of Europe, let alone America or Canada. Already the stresses on its environment are beginning to take a toll on the social fabric. The Gobi desert is at Beijing’s doorstep and the capital must divert water hundreds of kilometres north from resentful provinces who have to do more with less. The pollution from factories in rural areas prevents farmers from earning a living by growing healthy crops. River life for China’s southern neighbours is threatened by massive hydro-electric projects [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/09/25/china-must-talk-to-its-religious-leaders-to-create-a-culture-of-ecological-sustainability/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>does environmental science lead to environmental action?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/04/03/does-environmental-science-lead-to-environmental-action/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/04/03/does-environmental-science-lead-to-environmental-action/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:41:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=228</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have just finished teaching my undergraduate course on religion and the environment. Most of the students are in engineering or environmental science, and the course fulfills a humanities requirement for them. It&#8217;s been fascinating teaching scientists about religion, as you can imagine, but it&#8217;s also been hard. One of the most serious problems that I&#8217;ve had to deal with among my students is the basic assumption that seems to be taught in environmental science, namely that knowing more about the environment is the best way to generate action on the environment. This assumption is, from a historical perspective, hard to justify. The development of the modern scientific view of nature has not been accompanied by an enhanced respect for nature. Rather, scientific knowledge of the environment has swept away any traditional sense of nature as sacred or deserving of respect. At the same time it has enabled massive industrial exploitation of natural resources without regard for ecological sustainability. Now I&#8217;m not against science. Far from it. But I am against the simplistic fallacy that knowing about the environment necessarily leads to better adaptation to the environment. The cultural anthropologist Roy Rappaport long ago made the important distinction between the [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/04/03/does-environmental-science-lead-to-environmental-action/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>is china&#8217;s one child policy environmentally ethical?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/05/is-chinas-one-child-policy-environmentally-ethical/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/05/is-chinas-one-child-policy-environmentally-ethical/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:39:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecological footprint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[one child policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[population]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=84</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By James Miller I&#8217;ve been following Andrew Revkin&#8217;s dot Earth blog at the New York Times. The tag-line of the blog is &#8220;Nine Billion People. One Planet&#8221; and is premised on the demographic likelihood that by 2050 the world&#8217;s population will have increased from six to nine billion, effectively adding another two Chinas to what we have already.  At the same time, the populations of China, Brazil and India are developing their economies at a relatively rapid rate which means that those populations will be commanding a larger ecological footprint than they are doing already. China&#8217;s 2001 ecological footprint was 1.5 global hectares per person. Canada&#8217;s was 6.4. Assuming that China&#8217;s economic development will bring about an expansion of its ecological footprint, the results could be catastrophic to say the least. China has 20% of the current world&#8217;s population but only 13% of China&#8217;s land mass is arable land. Economic development, moreover, has brought about a rapid deterioration in the quality of the natural environment, and a shrinking in the amount and quality of arable land. One tenth of China&#8217;s 120 million hectares of arable land is now contaminated, and China seems increasingly unable to provide itself with a necessary level of [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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