Sacred Forests of Asia (The Earthscan Forest Library)

Presenting a thorough examination of the sacred forests of Asia, this volume engages with dynamic new scholarly dialogues on the nature of sacred space, place, landscape, and ecology in the context of the sharply contested ideas of the Anthropocene.

Given the vast geographic range of sacred groves in Asia, this volume discusses the diversity of associated cosmologies, ecologies, traditional local resource management practices, and environmental governance systems developed during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Adopting theoretical perspectives from political ecology, the book views ecology and polity as constitutive elements interacting within local, regional, and global networks. Readers will find the very first systematic comparative analysis of sacred forests that include the karchall mabhuy of the Katu people of Central Vietnam, the leuweng kolot of the Baduy people of West Java, the fengshui forests of southern China, the groves to the goddess Sarna Mata worshiped by the Oraon people of Jharkhand India, the mauelsoop and bibosoop of Korea, and many more. Comprising in-depth, field-based case studies, each chapter shows how the forest’s sacrality must not be conceptually delinked from its roles in common property regimes, resource security, spiritual matters of ultimate concern, and cultural identity.

This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of indigenous studies, environmental anthropology, political ecology, geography, religion and heritage, nature conservation, environmental protection, and Asian studies.

Chris Coggins is Professor of Geography and Asian Studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, USA. He is editor and author of Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (2014, with Emily Ting Yeh); The Tiger and the Pangolin: Nature, Culture, and Conservation in China (2003); and The Primates of China: Biogeography and Conservation Status―Past, Present, and Future (2002).

Bixia Chen is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of the Ryukyus, Japan. She is co-editor of Traditional Rural Landscapes in Island Topography in East Asia (2012, with Yuei Nakama).