[INDOLOGY] re. Sanskrit can tackle climate change

[Shaw, Julia]

Further to Antonia Ruppell's pertinent remarks on this topic, some of you may be interested in my recent edited volume on Archaeology and Environmental Ethics which calls for those studying environmental events past and present to give greater thought to the religio-philosophical and epistemological roots of the historically specific human–environmental relationships that underlie our current environmental and climate-change crisis, and to question how differing attitudes towards the relationship between humans and non-humans may produce distinct environmental trajectories and responses to extreme events.


https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rwar20/48/4<https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rwar20/48/4>

The following is from the Introduction: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2016.132675
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2016.132675>


The volume brings together papers on archaeology’ s engagement with the ethical dimension of

past:present:future global environmental discourse, arguing that the study of historically specific

human:non-human:environment worldviews and epistemologies, particularly those in which

religio-cultural constructs regarding humans’  place in the world are shaping forces in economic,

socio-political and environmental action, should be key to building long-term perspectives on the

current global environmental crisis. Its publication is timely given the growing cross-disciplinary

interest in Anthropocene studies with which archaeology has only recently begun to engage,

albeit generally with the rather restricted aim of promoting its capacity to deepen temporal

 perspectives on the social-construction-of-‘ nature’  theme that permeates Anthropocene discussions

and to provide empirical evidence for practical and material responses to climate change and

extreme environmental events, as relevant models for present:future challenges. Further, the

related human:environmental ‘ entanglement’  discourse has, with recent exceptions (Lane 2015 ),

tended to focus on agrarian and technological agents of change, rather than on underlying ethical

frameworks whether driven by explicit religious theologies and epistemologies or through more

broadly applicable ideological ‘ worldviews’  akin to Latour’ s (2013b ) ‘ secular religion’ . Finally,

archaeology’ s growing interest in the generalized term ‘ climate change’ , itself a symptom of

deeper human:environment imbalance, tends to overlook the diversity and variation of impact

in terms of both causal contributing factors and individualized impact at a human level.

The volume arose from the need to address these problems through examination of historical

concepts of human:non-human care in relation to environmental ethics and historical socioecology

and assessment of how particular social, religious, or political groups responded to new

environmental challenges in antiquity.


My own contribution addresses gaps in the understanding of the interface between religious, socio-economic and environmental change in ancient India, perpetuated partly by a lack of coordinated interdisciplinary teamwork between Indology and archaeology, and queries to what extent ancient Indian religio-philosophical traditions upheld notions of ‘ nature’ , ‘ environment’  and environmental ethics that can contribute to contemporary discourse on our climate / environmental change crisis.


https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2016.1250671




Best wishes

Julia Shaw


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Dr Julia Shaw

Lecturer in South Asian Archaeology

Chair of Ethics Committee
Tutor for Academic Writing
Institute of Archaeology UCL
31-34 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PY

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/people/academic/julia-shaw
<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/people/academic/julia-shaw>https://ucl.academia.edu/juliashaw








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