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
The following is from the Introduction: 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
------------------------------
------------------------------ ------ Dr Julia Shaw
Lecturer in South Asian Archaeology
Chair of Ethics CommitteeTutor for Academic WritingInstitute of Archaeology UCL
31-34 Gordon SquareLondon WC1H 0PY
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