The Planetary Costs of Nationalism By Whitney A. Bauman Invisible things matter. I’m not only talking about whatever we might call spirits, souls, or divinities, but also about reason, ideas, numbers, and language. These invisible things all materialize in the world, co-constructing our worlds in various ways. The same can Read more
The Origins of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture and its Journal By Bron Taylor The idea to create the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture began in conversations I had with Sarah McFarland Taylor and Rebecca Gould in the late Read more
Queer Muslims: Spiritual Resistance to Current of Islamic Conservatism in Indonesia By Muhammad Harkim Novridho In recent years, tensions between queer identity and religion in Indonesia have intensified amid the rise of a type of conservatism that rejects gender diversity. Queer groups are often seen as non-religious and excluded from Read more
Relational Ecology and Climate Justice: The Bayan and Environmental Democracy By Arfi Hidayat Indigenous animisms in the Bayan region provide a great example of relational ethic. This ethic matches up with Kyle Whyte’s understanding of how Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) might be used to address issues of climate change. First, Read more
Life Cairns: Embracing Grief, Building Hope By Kocku von Stuckrad We are living in a time of profound transformation. The powers east and west of the Atlantic—which, as Edouard Glissant pointed out, is the site of the largest unmarked grave in history—are losing their influence. Past privileges are being challenged, Read more
Gastrocolonialism and the Unmaking of Worlds By Marsekal Gimbo The relentless displacement of local food systems in Eastern Indonesia by standardized rice and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is often narrated as a simple story of dietary change, a natural byproduct of modernization and national integration. However, viewed through the theoretical lens Read more
Ethics Without Transcendence: Criteria for Planetary Becoming By Whitney A. Bauman If we are going to have a radically immanent understanding of reality such as found in forms of new materialisms, among many other animist or pantheist ways of thinking, then we ought to begin to articulate how we navigate Read more
A Case for Ignorance By Annika Kraft Ignorance leads a shadowy existence in the modern cultural and scientific history of Europe and the West, which is built on opposites: culture–nature, science–religion, ratio–emotion, knowledge–ignorance. Ignorance tends to be seen as a state that can be overcome and is all too often Read more
Cooking up Change: A Hundred Years of World Animal Day By Teya Brooks Pribac Nonhuman animals have always preoccupied the human mind, some animal species—and some human minds—more than others. Communities throughout history have opted to leave animals off the menu. At the end of the 19th century and beginning Read more
A Watersheds Moment By Gary Slater The phrase “watershed moment” is used so commonly that it’s easy to forget how, if at all, actual watersheds come into it. If the metaphorical fit of watersheds with moments works well enough that the phrase has successfully become a cliché, there are nevertheless Read more