Chinese Environmental Ethics

Mayfair Yang is professor of religious and East Asian studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has authored two monographs: Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: the Art of Social Relationships in China (American Ethnological Society Prize) and Re-enchanting Modernity in China: Ritual Economy and Religious Civil Society in Wenzhou) and has edited two books: Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation and Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China.

While one might expect a book titled Chinese Environmental Ethics to be highly textual, theoretical, and prescriptive, its contents are refreshingly empirical … Environmental humanities scholars will not only receive a hearty introduction to environmentalism with Chinese religious characteristics, but can retain several useful case studies for witnessing Chinese religio-environmental ethics in action.

• I. Introduction By Prof. Mayfair Yang (Religious Studies/East Asian Studies, U.C. Santa Barbara)II. Exploring Non-Anthropocentric OntologiesChapter 1: Protecting Life in Taiwan: Can the Rights of Nature Protect all Sentient Beings? By Jeffrey Nicolaisen (Duke Kunshan University, China)III. The Sacralization of Trees and ForestsChapter 2: From Mission to Economy: The Vicissitudes of Daoist Ecological Forests in Minqin County, Gansu ProvinceBy Der-Rui Yang (Anthropology, Nanjing University, China) Chapter 3: Homo Arborealus: The Intermeshing of Regimes of Tree-MindednessBy Adam Chau (East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, U.K.) IV. Sentient Beings: Engaging with Animals and Divinities in Dreams and RitualsChapter 4: The Non-Anthropocentricity of Dreaming in Late Classical and Medieval ChinaBy Robert Ford Campany (Asian Studies & Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University)Chapter 5: Releasing Animals for Buddhist Merit in the Context of Science and EcologyBy Dedong Wei (Institute