This book draws on ethnographic studies in Southeast Asia to provide new insights into human-environmental relationships and ecologies, together with a set of theoretical innovations. Contextualizing ecologies in this region as pluralizing or hegemonic, conflictive or cooperative, the case studies in these chapters bring into dialogue ontological approaches, the issue of distinct worldviews and concepts of nature on the one hand and political ecology and power relations on the other. They discuss plural ecologies in diverse settings, reaching from urban Vietnam to the Javanese coast and the dense forests of the Southeast Asian highlands. Southeast Asia is one of the most biodiverse and culturally diverse regions in the world. Thus, what occurs in this region is vitally important to the future of Earth. Documenting the plurality and dynamics of ecologies in Southeast Asia, this book provides prime examples for the potentials of alternative human-environmental relationships and sustainable development. It will be of interest to academics studying political ecology, environmental anthropology, sustainability sciences, political sciences, development studies, human geography, human ecology, Southeast Asian studies, and Asian studies.

Focusing on issues of empathy and mutuality, and self and other, as experienced in the everyday challenges of doing participant-observation fieldwork, this volume makes a significant contribution to rethinking the experiential and conceptual construction of the field. The contributors adopt a critical and self reflexive approach that goes beyond issues of voice and representation raised by early postmodern anthropology, to grapple with issues concerning the nature of knowledge transmission that lie at the very heart of the ethnographic effort. They explore how multiple modes of attending, awareness and sense making can shape the ethnographic process. Of note are those unanticipated, less palpable forms of communication that are peripheral to or transcend more formalized and structured research methods and agendas. Among these are empathy, intuition, somatic modes of attention and/or embodied knowledge and identification, as well as, shared sensory experiences and aesthetics. By the elaboration of such concepts the volume as a whole offers a substantial elaboration of a phenomenological approach.

Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon - its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.

Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon - its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.

Modernity is surrounded by an almost magic aura that casts a spell over people all over the world. To connect with modernity, various ways and means are used, among them magic practices and religious ideas. Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia: Magic and Modernity deals with the magic in and of modernity and asks about its current significance for the dynamics of religion in Southeast Asia. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in this area, the contributors to this wide-ranging volume demonstrate how religious concepts contribute to meeting the challenges of modernity. Against this background, religion and modernity are no longer perceived as in contradiction; rather, it is argued that a revision of the western notion of religion is required to understand the complexity of 'multiple modernities' in a globalised world.. Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia: Magic and Modernity is part of the series Global Asia, published by Amsterdam University Press (AUP) in close collaboration with the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)