Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise
Are spiritually and religiously inspired environmental movements in Asia largely overlooked as an essential contribution to the global goal of environmental sustainability?
About the project
The project Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Potential (Transsustain) explores the mobilisation and recalibration of traditional Asian religio-philosophical ideas in response to the global environmental crisis.
The project emerges from the observation that scholars, activists, and even politicians in India and China and Taiwan have found inspiration in traditional knowledge and in premodern texts and practices of, for instance, Daoist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Confucian traditions to envision more ecologically sustainable futures.
We then ask how these transcendent ideas about the value of human-nature relations are put into practice among contemporary policymakers, religious institutions, and spiritual-environmental movements. We will carry out in-depth case studies in Asia that will help us analyze and assess the societal impact of such movements and, ultimately, their universal potential.
Research objectives
Transsustain will create a firm empirical base of new in-depth case studies of spiritual-environmental movements in China/Taiwan and India. Based on these case studies, we explore questions of more theoretical and practical value:
- Are transcendent environmentalist ideals based on cultural traditions really able to garner broad popular support in ways that politics and science cannot?
- Could transcendency and acknowledgement of the value of enchantment constitute the tipping point that is needed for a successful global political project of environmental sustainability? Is transcendent environmentalism simply a digression?
Sub-projects (Work packages)
- WP1: Religio-Philosophically Inspired Civil Environmental Movements
Studies civil initiatives and movements “from below” that seek to integrate spiritual/philosophical transcending ideas with environmental agency.
- WP2: Spiritually Grounded Political Visions of Global Futures
Studies how broader national and global environmental political initiatives sometimes draw on spiritual/philosophical traditions – how they do it, why, and with which consequences.
- WP3: The Greening of Asian Religious Institutions
Studies how already established religious institutions start to promote new environmental activities and what effects this has in local societies, nationally and globally.
Project duration
01.10.2020 - 30.06.2026
Collaboration
- Institute of Anthropology, University of Zheijang, China
- University of Ashoka, India
- Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
- Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo
- Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo
Financing
The Research Council of Norway
Publications
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Chen, Lu & Hansen, Mette Halskov (2022). Gender and Power in China’s Environmental Turn: A Case Study of Three Women-Led Initiatives. Social Sciences. ISSN 2076-0760. doi: 10.3390/socsci11030097. Full text in Research Archive
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Münster, Daniel (2021). The Nectar of Life: Fermentation, Soil Health, and Bionativism in Indian Natural Farming . Current Anthropology. ISSN 0011-3204. 62, p. 311–322. doi: 10.1086/715477.
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Münster, Daniel (2020). The Science Question in Alternative Agricultures: Zero Budget Natural Farming and the emergence of agronomical pluralism in India. In Michaels, Axel & Wulf, Christoph (Ed.), Science and Scientification in South Asia and Europe. Routledge. ISSN 9780429353215.
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Kvanneid, Aase Jeanette (2022). Climate change, gender and rural development: Making sense of coping strategies in the Shivalik Hills . Contributions to Indian sociology. ISSN 0069-9667. doi: 10.1177/00699667211059723.
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Hansen, Mette Halskov (2021). Ecological Civilization: Chinese Dream or Global Strategy? A Discussion with Mette Halskov Hansen. [Internet]. New Books Network. Show summary
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Hansen, Mette Halskov (2021). Keynote: "Ecological Civilization: Chinese Dream or Global Strategy?" .
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Hansen, Mette Halskov; Wellens, Koen; Münster, Daniel & Baviskar, Amita (2021). Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise. Panel presentation and discussion.
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Hansen, Mette Halskov (2021). Ecological Civilization.
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Chen, Lu (2021). Paper for Panel: China, Rural and Urban. Place Matters: Sprawl of Stones, Water and Plants from Mountains in Perceiving Unimaginable Disaster and Relocation .
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Hansen, Mette Halskov (2021). Forskningssamarbeid med Kina.
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Münster, Daniel (2021). Fermentation, Soil Health, and Planetary Health.
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Münster, Daniel (2021). More-than-human health. Soil and people in natural farming (India).
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Wellens, Koen (2020). Indigeneity and environmental resource management in Taiwan: what can we learn from Tsou boar hunting? .