RT Article
T1 Sacred Watersheds and the Fate of the Village Body Politic in Tibetan and Han Communities Under China's Ecological Civilization
JF Religions
VO 10
IS 11
A1 Coggins, Chris 1963-
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1688031804
AB The "spirit" in spiritual ecology is an active political force deserving sustained scholarly analysis and public recognition. This article reports on 15 years of field research on "animate landscapes," associated with gods and spirits in Tibetan communities, and "vital landscapes" associated with fengshui in Han Villages. Despite a century of dramatic sociopolitical change across rural areas in the People's Republic of China, many villages maintain significant geo-phenomenological connections between body, mind, and land, comprising a body politic maintained through ritual cycles and dwelling practices that uphold the sanctity and integrity of vital watersheds. Comparative analysis of Han and Tibetan spiritual ecologies reveals that cosmological landscapes comprise the armature of relational ontologies grounding and informing everyday life, livelihood, and power relations. As dynamic, emergent, and flexible systems of socio-ecological adaptation that both shape and are shaped by regional and transnational media, they play significant roles in policy initiatives associated with Ecological Civilization and hold potential for broadening the horizons of Anthropocene scholarship, socio-ecological activism, and meaningful settlement in a profoundly unsettled world.
K1 Ecological Civilization
K1 animate landscapes
K1 Anthropocene
K1 common property regimes
K1 geopiety/geopolity
K1 vital landscapes
K1 Watersheds
DO 10.3390/rel10110600