Search results

AbstractThis paper surveys the recent literature available for the study of the interaction between religion and nature within indigenous Asian traditions. Anyone engaging in this course of study must consider work from a variety of scholarly fields and engage with debates concerning definitions of the term "indigenous" in different Asian contexts. While this article does not represent every indigenous group and tradition of Asia, it nonetheless attempts to identify valuable starting points in key regions. While a large amount of important work exists on the indigenous peoples of Asia, there remains a need for more work drawing together different disciplines and analyzing interactions between religion and nature. We hope that scholars from different fields will find this survey useful for further research on nature in indigenous Asian traditions.

In this article, we describe a way to encourage students to envision "real utopias" through the Global Village experience at the Heifer Ranch in Arkansas. The Global Village experience introduces participants to issues associated with global hunger, poverty, environmental sustainability, and resource consumption and provides opportunities to experience simulated poverty and resource inequality. Using student journals recorded during the experience and participant observation, we demonstrate how students' learning is enhanced by temporarily living outside their typical comfort zones and closer to the global averages of consumption. We find that the Global Village experience is an effective and unique tool for engaging students in global and transnational issues and for encouraging students to imagine other possible worlds.