{"title":"Always Ascending (But Sometimes Descending)","authors":"Fran Markowitz, N. Avieli","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24589","url":null,"abstract":"This research explores the African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC)’s ongoing bond with the Land of Israel which they see as part of their program for a divinely inspired Edenic lifestyle. Based on long-term ethnographic engagements, our research focuses on community members’ use of a discursive trope that we call ‘ascending-descending’. This terminology, we argue, is both flexible and failure-proof, as it allows the AHIC to present themselves as Edenic and agrarian as well as modern, while also explaining their unsuccessful attempts at living off the land as the result of human fallibility. We also note an ongoing commitment within Hebrew Israelite theology to God’s plan that they believe can never fail, as well as to promises of earthly salvation and eternal life that continue to compel members of the AHIC to seek new and yet unrevealed paths to the Garden of Eden.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"81 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141652992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conservationist Cowboys in the Climate Age","authors":"Sarah McFarland Taylor","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24679","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that the hit Western television series, Yellowstone (2018–), offers an instructive case study as to how storied media can effectively use culturally resonant, religiously inflected idiom to cross the membrane of the digital filter bubble, morally engaging polarized publics. The series’ popular appeal bridges regional, political, and religious divides in ways that cultural creations explicitly labeled and presented as ‘environmental media’ fall short. Taking up thorny environmental and agricultural land-management issues, Yellowstone effectively presents more liberal-leaning viewers with the complexities, pressures, and ethical challenges faced by multigenerational ranchers in the American West, while making rural communities feel more ‘seen’ and appreciated. In a deeply divided country, Yellowstone, as a cultural work—and now as a broader popular cultural phenomenon worldwide—demonstrates the powerful potential of storied media to cultivate common ground in the climate age.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"65 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141652510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epilogue","authors":"David N Pellow","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.26143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.26143","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141682276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imperialist Multispecies Aspirations","authors":"Chika Watanabe","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24659","url":null,"abstract":"Humanities and social science scholars have recently turned their attention to the embeddedness of microbes in human life as a potential way to decentre the human and thereby decolonise assumptions about the human conquest of the natural world. In this article, I argue that, before such claims can be made, careful historical, regional, and ethnographic analyses of human-microbe relations are needed. My case study of a Japanese sustainable development, agricultural, and environmental NGO shows that human attunement to microbes is not necessarily decolonial in the context of Japan’s modern history. In fact, discourses of human openness to microbial life find affinity with Japanese nationalism and imperialism. Through my analysis, I contribute to scholarship that reveals how environmental visions link up with conservative and right-wing politics.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"26 36","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141685431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Engaged Scholarship in Times of Crisis","authors":"Jeremy Sorgen, Rebecca C Bartel, E. Bloomfield","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.28271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.28271","url":null,"abstract":"In 2021, the world was facing the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Doomsday Clock read ‘100 seconds to midnight’. In the United States, Donald Trump was ousted from the presidency, but not before he incited an attempted coup that cost several lives and entrenched political tensions. One year had passed since George Floyd’s murder ignited nationwide protests.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"51 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141111643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religion Scholarship on Indigenous Lands","authors":"Abel R Gomez","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.25258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25258","url":null,"abstract":"What does engaged scholarship on religion look like in the context of ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands? This article enters this conversation by examining research as fundamentally relational. Drawing on Shawn Wilson’s model of ‘research as ceremony’, the author argues that a move toward engaged scholarship is a move toward understanding the ways in which scholar and the community the scholar works with are embedded in relationship as well as the importance of ongoing self-reflection on one’s place in community. Engaged scholarship therefore is rooted in awareness of relationships, contributions to relationships, and, ultimately, is invested in strengthening relationships. The author turns to his ethnographic experiences with Ohlone tribes in the San Francisco and Monterey areas to examine ways this could look on the ground with particular communities. The article concludes by exploring the position of scholar as respectful ‘guest’ and the possibility of more intimate connections as a ‘relative’.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"23 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140672271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘The University has a Political Responsibility’","authors":"Rebecca C Bartel","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.26658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.26658","url":null,"abstract":"An interview with Katerine Duque, Coordinator of the Engaged Research Group on Social Movements and Peacebuilding, Institute of Intercultural Studies, Universidad Pontificia Javeriana-Cali, Columbia,","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"33 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140677318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Mother Earth’ is an Ancient Meme in the Global North","authors":"Joseph A P Wilson","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.27462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.27462","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"2015 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140246236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Response to Sam Gill’s Article ‘What is Mother Earth? A Name, A Meme, A Conspiracy’","authors":"Olle Sundström","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24264","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140245640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What is Mother Earth?","authors":"Sam Gill","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.19924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.19924","url":null,"abstract":"A rich appreciation of Mother Earth—in the entwined contexts of Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Western intellectual, and contemporary ecological movements—is accomplished in this paper using new perspectives and strategies: Mother Earth as name, meme, and conspiracy. This approach is developed and illustrated to offer insight into the dynamics of identity formation of individual cultures, amalgams of cultures, academic approaches, and ecological movements that span the globe, always occurring in the context of threatening, yet creative, encounters. Projecting beyond the Mother Earth example, the paper proposes a vision of the academic study of cultures and religions that focuses on gesture and repetition demonstrating that conditions of coherence, in the presence of the constant threat of incoherence, may be more valuable than discerning meaning.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140245672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}