Earthly Things

Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking

Edited by Karen Bray, Heather Eaton and Whitney Bauman

Contributor(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Philip Clayton, John Grim, Matthew Hartman, Graham Harvey, Christopher Ives, Elana Jefferson-Tatum, Catherine Keller, Kimerer L. LaMothe, Sam Mickey, Kevin Minister, Sarah Pike, Joerg Rieger, Terra S. Rowe, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Kevin Schilbrack, Mary Evelyn Tucker, O'neil Van Horn and Carol Wayne White

Published: 2023

ISBN: 9781531503079

Page Count: 352

Formats:

Price: $39.99

Description: 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 social and ecological crises with planetary implications. Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking, argues that more immanent or planetary ways of thinking and acting have great potential for re-thinking human-technology-animal-Earth relationships and for addressing problems of global climate weirding and other forms of ecological degradation. Older and often-marginalized forms of thought from animisms, shamanisms, and other religious traditions are joined by more recent forms of thinking with immanence such as the universe story, process thought, emergence theory, the new materialisms (NM’s), object-oriented ontologies (OOO’s), affect theory, and queer theory.

This book maps out some of the connections and differences between immanent frameworks to provide some eco-intellectual commons for thinking within the planetary community, with a particular emphasis on making connections between more recent theories and older ideas of immanence found in many of the world’s religious traditions. The authors in this volume met and worked together over five years, so the resulting volume reveals sustained and multifaceted perspectives on “thinking and acting with the planet.”
Reviews: Way to bring religion down to Earth! Humankind needs to get its act together, but we aren’t feeling it yet. Every essay in this book reframes ecological speech in the key of religious uplift, an affect that can achieve Earth magnitude. But wait, there’s more. I hold that religion is the phenomenology of the biosphere: how it is lived. Religion is too often essentialized and naturalized and displaced and kicked upstairs into a heaven where a mostly white mostly male cis psychopath who mostly wants to hurt you needs protection money. This wonderful book is part of making sure that can’t happen.---Timothy Morton, author of Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People

The humanities have witnessed an invigorating influx of new (or, perhaps, old) modes of immanent thought. These new/old varieties of vitalism, materialism, and animism challenge transcendent, dualistic perspectives that reduce matter to inert, lifeless stuff and locate supreme value in realms beyond our earthly home. Earthly Things presents a persuasive genealogy of these intriguing “isms,” effectively interweaving them with emerging scholarship in religion and ecology. The essays issue a delightfully varied but cohesive call for planetary sensibilities—immanent religiosities—that bind humans to our nonhuman kin and ground us once more in the living earth.---Lisa H. Sideris, Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Details: ISBN-13 9781531503079
Published: 2023-08-01

Trim: 6.000in x 9.000in x 0.000in
Contributors: Edited: Whitney Bauman
Whitney Bauman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He is also co-founder and co-director of Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge, a nonprofit based in Berlin, Germany. His publications include Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic andEnvironmental Ethics and Uncertainty: Tackling Wicked Problems (co-written with Kevin O’Brien).
Edited: Karen Bray
Karen Bray is Associate Professor of Religion, Philosophy, and Social Change and the director of the Honors Program at Wesleyan College. Her recent publications include Grave Attending: A Political Theology for the Unredeemed, and the co-edited volume, Religion, Emotion, Sensation: Affect Theories and Theologies.
Contributions: Christopher Key Chapple
Contributions: Philip Clayton
Edited: Heather Eaton
Heather Eaton is Full Professor at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, co-editor, with Lauren Levesque, of Advancing Nonviolence and Social Transformation, and editor of The Intellectual Journey of Thomas Berry: Imagining the Earth Community.
Contributions: John Grim
Contributions: Matthew Hartman
Contributions: Graham Harvey
Contributions: Christopher Ives
Contributions: Elana Jefferson-Tatum
Contributions: Catherine Keller
Catherine Keller is a professor of constructive theology at the Theological School of Drew University. Her books include Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglements (2014) and Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (2018).
Contributions: Kimerer L. LaMothe
Kimerer L. LaMothe has taught at Brown and Harvard universities. She is currently a Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, where she is completing a second book, Nietzsche's Dancers: Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham.
Contributions: Sam Mickey
Contributions: Kevin Minister
Contributions: Sarah Pike
Contributions: Joerg Rieger
Contributions: Terra S. Rowe
Contributions: Mary-Jane Rubenstein
Mary-Jane Rubenstein is Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University, where she is also core faculty in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in the Science in Society Program.
Contributions: Kevin Schilbrack
Contributions: Mary Evelyn Tucker
Contributions: O'neil Van Horn
O'neil Van Horn is Assistant Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH. He holds a PhD in Philosophical and Theological Studies from Drew University and is a former Louisville Scholar (2021-2023). He has published various works in the fields of theopoetics, constructive ecotheology, and environmental philosophy.
Contributions: Carol Wayne White