-
There is growing consensus that life on the planet is in peril if climate change continues at its current pace. At stake is not only the future of many species but of humanity itself. As an increasing number of ecological economists have emphasized, these problems will only be adequately addressed by re-examining economic systems from…
-
-
Five hundred years ago the Protestant Reformation inspired profound theological, ecclesial, economic, and social transformations. But what impact does the Protestant tradition have today? And what might it have? This volume addresses such questions, focusing on the economic and ecological implications of the Protestant doctrine of grace. In the late twentieth century, a number of…
-
While predominant articulations of modern Christianity have indeed rendered matter dead and inert, late nineteenth-century accounts of oil in the US complicate narratives of wholesale Protestant disenchantment of nature as well as assumptions that re-enchantment will necessarily serve as an environmentally friendly antidote. Relying on petroculture analysis, early oil narratives convey a sense of oil…
-
Globalization and climate weirding are two of the leading phenomena that challenge and change the way we need to think and act within the planetary community. Modern Western understandings of human beings, animals, and the rest of the natural world and the subsequent technologies built on those understandings have thrown us into an array of…
-
Environmental degradation has been commonly linked to a modern loss of meaning, the sacred or enchantment in nature, spurring a variety of re-enchantment strategies. But what happens when the animated or enchanted matter turns out to be oil? What predominant disenchantment approaches miss are the ways extraction, early oil narratives and energy have consistently been…
-
This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across religious studies and the environmental humanities advances a lively discussion on materialism in its many forms. While there is little agreement on what ‘materialism’ means, it is evident that there is a resurgence in thinking about matter in more animated and active ways. The volume…
-
In the last fifty years, the Appalachian Mountains have suffered permanent and profound change due to the expansion of surface coal mining. The irrevocable devastation caused by this practice has forced local citizens to redefine their identities, their connections to global economic forces, their pasts, and their futures. Religion is a key factor in the…
-
On Petrocultures brings together key essays by Imre Szeman, a leading scholar in the field of energy humanities and a critical voice in debates about globalization and neoliberalism. Szeman’s most important and influential essays, in dialogue with exciting new pieces written for the book, investigate ever-evolving circuits of power in the contemporary world, as manifested…
