Buddhist Rituals, Mosque Sermons and Marine Turtles
Religion, Ecology and the Conservation of a Dinosaur in West Malaysia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v6i2.196Keywords:
religion, ecology, tradition, Buddhism, Islam, Malaysia, leatherback turtleAbstract
As industrial civilisation presses on the limits of ecosystems, scienti?c conservation requires new strategies to restrain the destruction or modi?cation of habitats and ecosystems in order to halt the decline in biodiversity. Some advocates of community-based conservation strategies propose that scienti?c conservation discourses and practices bene?t from supplementation by ritual practices and traditional knowledge associated with place-based religious traditions. Partnerships between conservation scientists and religionists, which engage religious discourses and rituals in local communities in the care of habitats and species, represent a signi?cant reframing of scienti?c conservation. Hybrid forms of conservation between science and religion manifest greater sensitivity to human ecological relationships than conventional statist conservation strategies. An example of such partnerships is the effort to conserve the endangered leatherback turtle in West Malaysia.
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———. 2001. ‘Christian–Muslim Relations in West Malaysia: Islam and Christianity in the Colonial Era’, The Muslim World 81: 48-71. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1991.tb03511.x.
———. 2011. ‘Arti_cial Persons against Nature: Environmental Governmentality, Economic Corporations and Ecological Ethics’, Annals of the New York Academy of Science: The Year in Conservation Biology and Ecology 1249: 104-17. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06294.x.
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———. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
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Veitayaki, J. 1997. ‘Traditional Marine Resource Management Practices Used in the Paci_c Islands: An Agenda for Change’, Ocean and Coastal Management 37: 123-36. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0964-5691(96)00069-5.
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Alatas, Syed H. 1972. Modernization and Social Change in Southeast Asia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson).
Augustin, Sean. 2008. ‘Friday Sermon on Turtles’, New Straits Times (November 15).
Balmford, Andrew et al. 2005. ‘The Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2010 Target’, Science 307: 212-13. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1106281.
Berkes, Fikret. 1987. ‘The Common Property Resource Problem and the Fisheries of Barbados and Jamaica’, Environmental Management 11: 225-45. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01867201.
———. 1999. Sacred Ecology (London: Taylor & Francis).
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice (trans. Richard Nice; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Butchart, Stuart H.M. et al. 2010. ‘Global Biodiversity Indicators of Recent Declines’, Science 325: 1503.
Callicott, J. Baird. 1997. Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Chan, Eng H. 2004. ‘Turtles in Trouble: Inaugural Lecture of Prof. Chan Eng Heng’, Kolej Universit Sains dan Technologi Malaysia, Kuala Terengganu, Kustem 7: 1-2.
———. 2006. ‘Marine Turtles in Malaysia On the Verge of Extinction?’, Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management 9: 175-84. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14634980600701559.
———. 2008. Interview with the author, Kuala Terengganu, West Malaysia (May 21).
Chapple, Christopher K. 1998. ‘Thomas Berry, Buddhism, and the New Cosmology’, Buddhist-Christian Studies 18: 147-54. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1390450.
Clavero, Miguel, and Emili Garcia-Berthou. 2001. ‘Invasive Species Are a Leading Cause of Animal Extinctions’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20: 110. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2005.01.003.
Clements, Reuben et al. 2009. ‘Islam, Turtle Conservation, and Coastal Communities’, Conservation Biology 23: 516-17. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01216.x.
Collins, Harry. 2010. Tacit and Explicit Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Feulner, Georg. 2011. ‘Limits to Biodiversity Cycles from a Uni_ed Model of Massextinction Events’, International Journal of Astrobiology 10: 123-29. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1473550410000455.
Gadgil, Madhav, Fikret Berkes, and Carl Folke. 1993. ‘Indigenous Knowledge for Biodiversity Conservation’, Ambio 22: 151–56.
Geertz, Clifford. 1984. Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books).
Gottlieb, Roger (ed.). 2006. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Hooker, M.B. 1976. ‘The Trengannu Inscription in Malayan Legal History’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 49: 127-31.
Horwich, Robert H., and Jonathan Lyon. 2007. ‘Community Conservation Practitioners Answer to Critics’, Oryx 41: 376-85. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0030605307001010.
Hulme, David, and Marshall M. Murphee. 2001. African Wildlife and Livelihoods the Promise of Community Conservation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).
Johannes, R.E. 1978. ‘Traditional Marine Conservation Methods in Oceania’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 9: 349-64. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.09.110178.002025.
Johnston, Lucas. 2009. ‘The Religious Dimensions of Sustainability: Institutional Religions, Civil Society, and International Politics since the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Religion Compass 4: 176-89. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00202.x.
Kasimin, Amran. 1991. Religion and Social Change among the Indigenous People of the Malay Peninsula (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka).
Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (trans. Catherine Porter; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Lessa, William A. 1984. ‘Sea Turtles and Ritual Conservation in the Carolina Islands’, in B. Gunda (ed.), The Fishing Culture of the World: Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado): 1183-201.
Liu, D. 1996. ‘Religion—An Effective Way for Conservation of Wildlife’, Chinese Biodiversity 4: 123-24.
Mekar. 2008. ‘Caring for and Improving the Environment: Our Shared Responsibility’, Sermon preached in 482 mosques in the State of Terengganu, 21 November, (trans. Na_sah Graham-Brown).
Morgan, R. Christopher. 2007. ‘Property of Spirits: Hereditary and Global Values of Sea Turtles’, Human Organization 66: 60-68.
Nagata, Judith. 1984. The Re_owering of Malaysian Islam Modern Religious Radicals and their Roots (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
Northcott, Michael. 2000. ‘From Environmental Utopianism to Parochial Ecology: Communities of Place and the Politics of Sustainability’, Ecotheology 8: 71-85.
———. 2001. ‘Christian–Muslim Relations in West Malaysia: Islam and Christianity in the Colonial Era’, The Muslim World 81: 48-71. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1991.tb03511.x.
———. 2011. ‘Arti_cial Persons against Nature: Environmental Governmentality, Economic Corporations and Ecological Ethics’, Annals of the New York Academy of Science: The Year in Conservation Biology and Ecology 1249: 104-17. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06294.x.
Pimm, Stuart, Gareth J. Russell, and John L. Gittleman. 1995. ‘The Future of Biodiversity’, Science 269: 347-50. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.269.5222.347.
Polanyi, Michael. 2010. The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Prince Philip. 2009. ‘Speech by His Royal Highness Prince Philip at the Windsor Celebration of Faiths and Environment’, November 3. Online: www.windsor2009.org/ARC-UNDPWindsor2009-SpeechbyPrincePhilip.pdf.
Rappaport, Roy. 1967. ‘Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among a New Guinea People’. Ethnology 6: 17-30. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3772735.
———. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Raup, David M., and J. John Sepkoski. 1982. ‘Mass Extinctions in the Marine Fossil Record’, Science 215: 1501. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.215.4539.1501.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. 1985. Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (New York: Random House).
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Sodhi, Navjot S. et al. 2010. ‘The State and Conservation of Southeast Asian Biodiversity’, Biodiversity Conservation 19: 317-28. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10531-009-9607-5.
Stern, Paul C. et al. 1999. ‘A Value-Belief-Norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism’, Human Ecology Review 6: 81-97.
Tuato’o-Bartley, Natasha, Thomas Morrell, and Peter Craig. 1993. ‘Status of Sea Turtles in American Samoa’, Paci_c Science 47: 215-21.
Tucker, Mary E. 1997. ‘The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology’, Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology 1: 3-24.
Veitayaki, J. 1997. ‘Traditional Marine Resource Management Practices Used in the Paci_c Islands: An Agenda for Change’, Ocean and Coastal Management 37: 123-36. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0964-5691(96)00069-5.
Vico, Giambattista. 1744 [1999]. The New Science (trans. David Marsh; London: Penguin).
Wackernagel, Mathis, and William Rees. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers).
Williams, Rowan. 2000. ‘On Being Creatures’, in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell): 63-78.
World Wildlife Foundation. 2005. Beyond Belief: Linking Faiths and Protected Areas to Support Biodiversity Conservation: A Research Report by WWF, Equilibrium and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (Geneva: WWF).
Yeo, Bee H. et al. 2009. Survey of Marine Turtle Egg Consumption and Trade in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Worldwide Fund for Nature).
Published
2012-07-16
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Northcott, M. (2012). Buddhist Rituals, Mosque Sermons and Marine Turtles: Religion, Ecology and the Conservation of a Dinosaur in West Malaysia. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 6(2), 196-214. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v6i2.196
