Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Butcher
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Himalayan Region ◽  
Flash Flooding ◽  
Flood Prevention ◽  
Proper Order ◽  
Religious Engagement ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Human World ◽  
Northwest India

In August 2010 the Himalayan Region of Ladakh, Northwest India, experienced severe flash-flooding and mudslides, causing widespread death and destruction. The causes cited were climate change, karmic retribution, and the wrath of an agentive sentient landscape. Ladakhis construct, order and maintain the physical and moral universe through religious engagement with this landscape. The Buddhist monastic incumbents—the traditional mediators between the human world and the sentient landscape—explain supernatural retribution as the result of karmic demerit that requires ritual intervention. Social, economic, and material transformations have distorted the proper order, generating a physically and morally unfamiliar landscape. As a result, the mountain deities that act as guardians and protectors of the land below are confused and angry, sending destructive water to show their displeasure. Thus, the locally-contextualized response demonstrates the agency of the mountain gods in establishing a moral universe whereby water can give life and destroy it.

scholarly journals When rebuilding no longer means recovery: the stress of staying put after Hurricane Sandy

2021 ◽  
Vol 165 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Koslov ◽  
Alexis Merdjanoff ◽  
Elana Sulakshana ◽  
Eric Klinenberg
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Flood Insurance ◽  
Health Consequences ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Policy Shifts ◽  
Post Disaster

AbstractAfter a disaster, it is common to equate repopulation and rebuilding with recovery. Numerous studies link post-disaster relocation to adverse social, economic, and health outcomes. However, there is a need to reconsider these relationships in light of accelerating climate change and associated social and policy shifts in the USA, including the rising cost of flood insurance, the challenge of obtaining aid to rebuild, and growing interest in “managed retreat” from places at greatest risk. This article presents data from a survey of individuals who opted either to rebuild in place or relocate with the help of a voluntary home buyout after Hurricane Sandy. Findings show those who lived in buyout-eligible areas and relocated were significantly less likely to report worsened stress than those who rebuilt in place. This suggests access to a government-supported voluntary relocation option may, under certain circumstances, lessen the negative mental health consequences associated with disaster-related housing damage.

Force fields of the modern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prem Poddar
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Force Fields ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Levels

The essentially contested notion of the modern, and its cognate form “modernity,” have a long intellectual history. The emergence and dissemination of the idea of Western modernity was sometimes forcibly imposed, sometimes partially accepted, and sometimes resisted at different levels around the globe. Recent thinking has produced qualifiers and prefixes such as “unfinished,” “post-,” “late,” “inevitable,” “contra-,” “alternative,” or “differential” in relation to modernity, to signal the striations in approaches, interpretations, and positionings towards what is seen as an umbrella term to describe the various possibilities that can be brought to bear while considering contentions in contemporary theory and praxis. The social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of this field of forces are integral to any thinking about the symbolic contestation of power in multifarious re-imaginings. This article charts this field mainly by looking at the colonial and postcolonial interventions that have impacted and continue to the present day to effect and inflect cultures and societies, including pressing questions of climate change and cyberspace. Sections are sorted under the following sub-headings: “The vortex of the modern;” “Subaltern bodies, subversive minds;” “Communication and colonization: Re-inventing space and time;” “Borderlands, migrations, identities;” and “Contesting and controlling cyberspace.”

scholarly journals Out of the Depths: Engineering, Submersibles and Assemblages

2015 ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
John Reader
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
Human World ◽  
Engineering Practices

Environmental concerns about the state of the world’s oceans have been growing over recent years, particularly as acidification, overfishing and the limited capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2 from climate change have come to the fore. Engineering practices and innovations in a number of forms are of direct relevance to this, notably through a concern to develop engineering in such a way as to be for the benefit of all, including the non-human world. This article argues that assemblage theory offers an alternative way of understanding how culture is always already a part of nature, and that human autonomy has to be seen as constrained and limited if the worst effects of pollution and climate change are to be addressed.

Philosophy and Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Independent Interest ◽  
The Social

Climate change is poised to threaten, disrupt, and transform human life, and the social, economic, and political institutions that structure it. In light of this, understanding climate change, and discussing how to address it, should be at the very center of our public conversation. Philosophy can make an enormous contribution to that conversation, but only if both philosophers and non-philosophers understand what it can contribute. The sixteen original articles collected in this volume both illustrate the diverse ways that philosophy can contribute to this conversation, and ways in which thinking about climate change can help to illuminate a range of topics of independent interest to philosophers.

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