Shunzo Sakamaki Extraordinary Lecture
Spiritual Ecology: Exploring the Relationships between Religions and Environment
Event ID: EV008989T
Info: Aug 1 • Wed • 7:00-9:00pm • Yukiyoshi Room, Krauss Hall 012 • Free • Call 956-8246 for more information and disability access
With: Leslie E Sponsel
Religion is an ancient cross-cultural universal; no society is known that does not have one or more religions, although individuals within a society vary in the degree of their religiosity and spirituality if any. Spirituality is an integral component of religion, but also extends beyond organizations to personal relationships with other people, nature, and the supernatural. Those who pursue spiritual ecology as a scientific and academic endeavor, a personal path of spirituality, and/or environmental activism, share the conviction that the worsening environmental crisis can only be resolved by a fundamental change in the way humans relate to nature involving sustainable and green environmental worldviews, attitudes, values, behaviors, and institutions. No single religion is considered to be either the cause or the solution for the ecocrisis; instead, adherents to any religion or spiritual practice are encouraged to apply introspection to develop more environmentally friendly orientations and conduct. This lecture explores spiritual ecology as a social, political, religious, and environmental movement from a scientific and academic perspective.
Leslie E. Sponsel earned his BA in geology from Indiana University, and MA, and PhD in anthropology from Cornell University. Over the last four decades he has taught at seven universities in four countries. These posts include a Fulbright Fellowship in Anthropology at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations in Caracas, Venezuela; and in Biology at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, Thailand.
Since 1981 Sponsel has served on the anthropology faculty at UH, where he is currently a professor and the director of the Ecological Anthropology Program. There he teaches ecological anthropology, environmental anthropology, the anthropology of religion, spiritual ecology, and sacred places, among other courses. At UH, he was a founding member of the Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Biology Program, Resource Management Certificate, and Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace.
Sponsel’s extensive publications include more than two dozen journal articles, three dozen book chapters, and two dozen articles in ten different scientific encyclopedias. He edited two books: Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia: An Ecological Anthropology of an Endangered World (University of Arizona Press, 1995), and Endangered Peoples of Southeast and East Asia: Struggles to Survive and Thrive (Greenwood Press, 2000), and is senior co-editor of two others, The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence (Lynne Rienner, 1994), and Tropical Deforestation: The Human Dimension (Columbia University Press, 1996). Other books are in preparation, including a text on ecological anthropology and a collection of essays on Buddhist ecology and environmentalism.