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.

I. Introduction

By Prof. Mayfair Yang (Religious Studies/East Asian Studies, U.C. Santa Barbara)

II. Exploring Non-Anthropocentric Ontologies

Chapter 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 Forests

Chapter 2: From Mission to Economy: The Vicissitudes of Daoist Ecological Forests in Minqin County, Gansu Province

By Der-Rui Yang (Anthropology, Nanjing University, China)

Chapter 3: Homo Arborealus: The Intermeshing of Regimes of Tree-Mindedness

By Adam Chau (East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, U.K.)

IV. Sentient Beings: Engaging with Animals and Divinities in Dreams and Rituals

Chapter 4: The Non-Anthropocentricity of Dreaming in Late Classical and Medieval China

By Robert Ford Campany (Asian Studies & Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University)

Chapter 5: Releasing Animals for Buddhist Merit in the Context of Science and Ecology

By Dedong Wei (Institute of Theoretical Buddhist & Religious Studies, Renmin University, China)

V. Sacred Sites and Fengshui Landscapes

Chapter 6: Fengshui and Livelihoods: Debating Sustainability in the Qing Dynasty

By Tristan Brown (History, M.I.T.)

Chapter 7: Grave Matters: The Confucian Campaign against Tomb-Removal

By Yongjia Liang (Sociology, National University of Singapore / Zhejiang University, China)

VI. Negotiating the Divides Between the Secular-Religious and Culture-Nature

Chapter 8: Buddhist Environmentalism and Civic Engagement in Secular Shanghai

By Weishan Huang (Cultural & Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong)