Re-Uniting with the Kosmos

Authors

  • Penelope S. Bernard

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v1i1.109

Keywords:

religion, nature, culture

Abstract

This paper considers the need for interdisciplinary study in the fields of religion, nature and culture, and the role of western scholarship in contributing to the current crises facing human/nature relations. In identifying the common fundamental theme that pervades much of the literature on the current environmental crisis, that of our mental separation from the kosmos (as in the ancient Greek sense) I consider the need to explore the role of scholars in being able to lead us back into a sense of unity with it. In suggesting ways through which this could come about, I explore my own research experiences and how they changed my basic worldview. I then consider how some of these experiences have challenged my understanding of the relationship between humans, nature and spirit.

References

Aschwanden, H. 1989 Karanga Mythology: An Analysis of the Consciousness of the Karanga in Zimbabwe (Gweru: Mambo Press).

Basso, K.H. 1988 ‘“Speaking with Names”: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache’, Current Anthropology 3.2: 99-130.

‘Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape’, in Feld and Basso (eds.) 1996: 53-90.

Benavides, G. 1998 ‘Modernity’, in M.C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 186-204.

Berglund, A.-I. 1976 Zulu Thought Patterns and Symbolism (London: C. Hurst & Company).

Bernard, P.S. 2003 ‘Reflexivity and Resonance: The Value of Contemporary Methodologies in the Experience and Understanding of Dreams, Ritual and the Natural World in Zulu Cosmologies’ (paper presented at the African Ritual and the Environment Conference, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa, 11–13 September).

a ‘Ancestors in Zulu Thought and the Significance of Ritual Exchange’, in Taylor (ed.) 2005: 1815-18.

b ‘Zulu Culture, Plants and the Spirit World (South Africa)’, in Taylor (ed.) 2005: 1818-22.

Bernard, P.S., and Z.D. Khumalo 2004 ‘Indigenous Knowledge and the Cultural Importance of Woodland and Forest Species in Southern Africa: The Case of Ubulawu’, in M. Lawes et al. (eds.), Indigenous Forest and Woodlands in South Africa: Policy, People and Practice (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press): 498-501.

Callicott, J.B. 1997 Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Carmichael, D.L., et al. (eds.) 1994 Sacred Sites, Sacred Places (London and New York: Routledge).

Casey, E.S. 1996 ‘How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena’, in Feld and Basso (eds.) 1996: 13-52.

Colchester, M. 1997 ‘Salvaging Nature: Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas’, in Ghimire and Pimbert (eds.) 1997: 97-130.

Darlington, S. 1998 ‘The Ordination of a Tree: The Buddhist Ecology Movement in Thailand’, Ethnology 37.1: 1-15.

Descola, P., and G. Pálsson (eds.) 1996 Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge).

Dupré, L. 1993 Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

Edie, J. 1965 ‘Notes on the Philosophical Anthropology of William James’, in J. Edie (ed.), An Introduction to Phenomenology: Studies in the Philosophy of Experience (Chicago: Quadrangle Books): 110-32.

Ellen, R.F. 1982 Environment, Subsistence and System: The Ecology of Small-scale Social Formations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Fairhead, J., and M. Leach 1996 Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Feld, S., and K. Basso (eds.) 1996 Senses of Place (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press).

Fernandez, J.W. 1982 An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

‘The Body in Bwiti: Variations on a Theme by Richard Werbner’, Journal of Religion in Africa 20.1: 92-111.

Friedson, S.M. 1996 Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).

Furst, P. (ed.) 1972 Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens (New York: Praeger).

Ghimire, K., and M. Pimbert (eds.) 1997 Social Change and Conservation (London: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development).

Gottlieb, R. (ed.) 1996 This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature and Environment (New York: Routledge).

Harner, M. 1990 The Way of the Shaman (San Francisco: Harper & Row).

Headland, T.N. 1997 ‘Revisionism in Ecological Anthropology’, Current Anthropology 38.4: 605-26.

Herzfeld, M. 2001 Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).

Hirst, M.M. 1990 ‘The Healer’s Art: Cape Nguni Diviners in the Townships of Grahamstown’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Rhodes University, South Africa).

Hyndman, D. 1994 ‘Conservation through Self-determination: Promoting the Interdependence of Cultural and Biological Diversity’, Human Organization 53.3: 296-302.

Jackson, M. 1989 Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).

Kinsley, D. 1996 ‘“Christianity as Ecologically Harmful” and “Christianity as Ecologically Responsible”’, in Gottlieb (ed.) 1996: 104-23.

Little, P.D. 1996 ‘Pastoralism, Biodiversity and the Shaping of Savanna Landscapes in East Africa’, Africa 66.1: 37-51.

Metzner, R. 1999 Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth (Rochester: Park St. Press).

Milton, K. 1996 Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse (London: Routledge).

‘Ecologies: Anthropology, Culture and the Environment’, International Social Sciences Journal 49.4: 477-96.

Morris, B. 1987 Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Posey, D.A. 2004 Indigenous Knowledge and Ethics: A Darrell Posey Reader (New York and London: Routledge).

Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1972 ‘The Cultural Context of an Aboriginal Hallucinogen: Banisteriopsis Caapi’, in Furst (ed.) 1972: 84-113.

Scorgie, F. 2002 ‘Virginity Testing and the Politics of Sexual Responsibility: Implications for AIDS Intervention’, African Studies 61.1: 55-75.

Slotkin, J.S. 1972 ‘The Peyote Way’, in W. Lessa and E. Vogt (eds.) 1972: 519-22.

Somé, M.P. 1994 Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (New York: Penguin).

Stoller, P., and C. Olkes 1987 In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship Among the Songhay of Niger (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).

Taylor, B. (ed.) 2005 Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London: Continuum).

Turner, E., et al. 1992 Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).

Van Binsbergen, W. 1991 ‘Becoming a Sangoma: Religious Anthropological Field-work in Francistown, Botswana’, Journal of Religion in Africa 21.4: 309-44.

Von Stuckrad, K. 2002 ‘Reenchanting Nature: Modern Western Shamanism and Nineteenth-Century Thought’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 20.4: 771-99.

Weber, M. 1971 The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism (London: Unwin University Books).

White Jr, Lynn 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203-207.

Willis, R. 1999 Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance: A Journey into African Self-hood in an African Village (Oxford and New York: Berg).

Published

2007-04-20

How to Cite

Bernard, P. S. (2007). Re-Uniting with the Kosmos. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 1(1), 109-128. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v1i1.109

Most read articles by the same author(s)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >>