The Promise of the Discourse of the Sacred for Conservation (and its Limits)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v1i3.326Keywords:
sacredness, indiginous religionAbstract
Popular concepts of ‘nature as sacred’—particularly when intentionally borrowed from or rhetorically/conceptually connected to indigenous world views—may be beneficial for conservation—but they also carry dangers. The rhetoric of the sacred raises questions of power when deployed in someone’s interest, especially, but not only, with regard to indigenous peoples. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, this article analyzes the human dimensions of conservation with regard to the significance of the sacred in recent conservation theory. I focus on the ways in which indigenous views of the sacred, and idealized notions of sacredness and spirituality, are mobilized for nature conservation, and on the role power asymmetry plays in disputes over nature, and with regard to places considered sacred in both indigenous and non-indigenous areas.
References
Anderson, D., J. Salick, R. Moseley, and O. Xiaokun 2005 ‘Conserving the Sacred Medicine Mountains: A Vegetation Analysis of Tibetan Sacred Sites in Northwest Yunnan’, Biodiversity and Conservation 14.13: 3065-91. doi:10.1007/s10531-004-0316-9
Anthwal, A., R.C. Sharma, and A. Sharma 2006 ‘Sacred Groves: Traditional Way of Conserving Plant Diversity in Garhwal Himalaya, Uttaranchal’, Journal of American Science 2.2: 35-38.
Argyrou, V. 2002 Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: A Postcolonial Critique (London: Pluto Press).
The Logic of Environmentalism: Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality (New York: Berghahn Books).
Ballard, S. 2001 Rudolf Otto and the Synthesis of the Rational and the Non-Rational in the Idea of the Holy: Some Encounters in Theory and Practice (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang).
Berkes, F. 1999 Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management (London: Taylor & Francis).
Brosius, P.J. 2001 ‘Local Knowledges, Global Claims: On the Significance of Indigenous Ecologies in Sarawak, East Malaysia’, in J.A. Grim (ed.), Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press): 125-58.
Callicott, B.J. 1994 ‘Toward a Global Environmental Ethic’, in M.E. Tucker and J.A. Grim (eds.), Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy and the Environment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books): 30-40.
Chandran, M.D.S., M. Gadgil, and J.D. Hughes 1998 ‘Sacred Groves of the Western Ghats of India’, in P.S. Ramakrishnan, K.G. Saxena, and U.M. Chandrashekara (eds.), Conserving the Sacred for Biodiversity Management (New Delhi, Calcutta: Oxford and IBH Publishing): 211-31.
Chidester, D. 1987 Patterns of Action: Religion and Ethics in a Comparative Perspective (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth).
Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia).
Chidester, D., and E.T. Linenthal (eds.) 1995 American Sacred Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Colpe, C. (ed.) 1977 Die Diskussion um das Heilige (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft).
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff 1989 ‘The Colonization of Consciousness in South Africa’, Economy and Society 18: 267-96. doi:10.1080/03085148900000013
Deloria Jr., V. 2005 ‘The Sacred and the Modern World’, in Taylor 2005: 1446-48.
Gatta, J. 2004 Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America—From the Puritans to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Girard, R. 1977 Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press; French original 1972).
Golliher, J. 1999 ‘Ethical, Moral, and Religious Concerns’, in Posey 1999: 437-50.
Gottlieb, R. 1996 This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, and Environment (New York: Routledge).
Gould, R. 2005 At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Grim, J.A. 2001 ‘Indigenous Traditions and Deep Ecology’, in D.L. Barnhill and R. Gottlieb (eds.), Deep Ecology and World Religions: New Essays on Sacred Grounds (Albany: State University of New York Press): 35-38.
Harmon, D., and A.D. Putney (eds.) 2003 The Full Value of Parks: From Economics to the Intangible (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).
Hay-Edie, T. 2003 ‘The Cultural Values of Protected Areas’, in Harmon and Putney 2003: 91-102.
Idinopulos, T., and E.A. Yonan 1996 The Sacred and its Scholars: Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data (Leiden: E.J. Brill).
IUCN, The World Conservation Union 1994 Guidelines for Protected Area Management (prepared by the IUCN Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas with the Assistance of the World Commission Monitoring Centre; Gland, Switzerland: IUCN).
Khumbongmayum, A.D., M.L. Khan, and R.S. Tripathi 2004 ‘Sacred Groves of Manipur—Ideal Centres for Biodiversity Conservation’, Current Science 87.4: 430-33.
Latour, B. 1993 We Have Never Been Modern (trans. C. Porter; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Little, P. 1999 ‘Environments and Environmentalism in Anthropological Research: Facing the New Millenium’, Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 253-84. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.28.1.253
Lowenhaupt Tsing, A. 2003 ‘Cultivating the Wild: Honey-Hunting and Forest Management in Southeast Kalimantan’, in Zerner 2003: 24-55.
Maffi, L. (ed.) 2001 On Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language Knowledge, and the Environment (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution).
McCutcheon, R.T. 1997 Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Milton, K. 1996 Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse (London and New York: Routledge).
‘Nature is Already Sacred’, Environmental Values 8: 437-49.
Naess, A. 1989 Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Orlove, B.S., and S.B. Brush 1996 ‘Anthropology and the Conservation of Biodiversity’, Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 329-52. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.329
Otegui Acha, M. 2003 ‘Wirikuta: The Wixarika/Huichol Sacred Natural Site in the Chihuahuan Desert, San Luis Potosí, Mexico’, in Harmon and Putney 2003: 295-307.
Otto, R. 1924 The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press; German original 1917).
Posey, D.A. (ed.) 1999 Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity (London: Intermediate Technology Publications).
Putney, A.D. 2003 ‘Introduction: Perspectives of Values of Protected Areas’, in Harmon and Putney 2003: 3-11.
Ramakrishnan, P.S., K.G. Saxena, and U. Chandrasekar (eds.) 1998 Conserving the Sacred: For Biodiversity Management (New Delhi, Calcutta: UNESCO/Oxford IBH Publishing).
Raphael, M. 1997 Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Roseman, M. 2003 ‘Singers of the Landscape: Song, History, and Property Rights in the Malaysian Rainforest’, in Zerner 2003: 109-41.
Rössler, M. 2003 ‘World Heritage Sites: Toward Linking the Intangible and the Intangible’, in Harmon and Putney 2003: 197-210.
Schaaf, T. 2003 ‘Biosphere Reserves: Tangible and Intangible Values’, in Harmon and Putney 2003: 185-96.
Sinha, B., and R.K. Maikuri 1998 ‘Conservation through “Socio-Cultural-Religious Practice” in Garhwal Himalaya: A Case Study of Hariyali Sacred Grove’, in Ramakrishnan, Saxena, and Chandrasekar 1998: 289-99.
Sponsel, L.E. 2001 ‘Is Indigenous Spiritual Ecology Just a New Fad? Reflections on the Historical and Spiritual Ecology of Hawai’i’, in J.A. Grim (ed.), Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press): 159-74.
Stevens, S. (ed.) 1997 Conservation through Cultural Survival: Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Taylor, B. 2001a ‘Earth and Nature-Based Spirituality (Part I): From Deep Ecology to Radical Environmentalism’, Religion 31.2: 175-93.
b ‘Earth and Nature-Based Spirituality (Part II): From Earth First! and Bioregionalism to Scientific Paganism and the New Age’, Religion 31.3: 225-45.
‘A Green Future for Religion?’, Futures Journal 36.9: 991-1008.
Taylor, B. (ed.) 2005 The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London and New York: Continuum).
Taylor, B., and J. Geffen 2003 ‘Battling Religions in Parks and Forest Reserves: Facing Religion in Conflicts over Protected Places’, in Harmon and Putney 2003: 281-93.
Tiedje, K. 2005 ‘People, Place, and Politics in the Huasteca, Mexico’, Anthropology Today 21.4: 13-17. doi:10.1111/j.0268-540X.2005.00367.x
Töpfer, K. 1999 ‘Forward’, in Posey 1999: xi-xii.
Tucker, M.E. 1997 ‘The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology’, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, and Religion 1.1: 3-24.
Tucker, M.E., and J.A. Grim 1993 World Views and Ecology (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press).
WCED, The World Commission on Environment and Development 1987 Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
UNESCO (Man and the Biosphere Program) 1988 Man Belongs to the Earth: International Cooperation in Environmental Research (Paris: UNESCO-MAB).
Zent, S. 1999 ‘The Quandary of Conserving Ethnoecological Knowledge: A Piaroa Example’, in T.L. Gragson and B. Blount (eds.), Ethnoecology: Knowledge, Resources, and Rights (Athens: University of Georgia Press): 90-124.
Zerner, C. 2003 ‘Sounding the Massakar Straight: The Poetics and Politics of an Indonesian Marine Environment’, in Zerner 2003: 58-108.
Zerner, C. (ed.) 2003 Culture and the Question of Rights. Forests, Coasts, and Seas in Southeast Asia (Durham: Duke University Press).
