The global climate crisis has widened inequalities, reignited conflicts and reoriented political struggles as communities and governments struggle to adapt to, and prepare for, radical ecological change. As the far-reaching environmental consequences of the climate crisis become clear, anthropologists have highlighted the ways in which myriad place-based and indigenous ways of being challenge the destructive ecological practices of late capitalism (Cruikshank 2005, Kohn 2013, de la Cadena 2015, Livingston 2019, TallBear and Wiley 2019). While these discussions show the significance of questions of cosmology and spirituality in addressing the present moment, far less attention has been paid to the role of the so-called “world religions” in shaping our ecological present and future. This panel explores the intersections of global religions, politics and the rapid environmental changes brought by climate change, asking how regimes of truth and questions of social responsibility bear out in these contentious contexts. We inquire after the role of Buddhist ethics in mediating understandings of environmental degradation in relation to social inequality in return-to-the-farm movements in South Korea; how climate change and ecological uncertainty are refracted through debates over Muslim funeral practices and the care of past and future generations in Tanzania; how Christian fundamentalist engagement with climate science shape understandings of climate crisis in the Southern United States; how climate change comes to be understood as a question of moral/spiritual pollution by Hindus in the Indian Sundarbans and how Native American stories featuring universal Trickster figures foretell the climate crisis and point to alternative ways of living together. Our panel seeks to bring anthropologies and political ecologies of climate change into conversation with key questions in the anthropology of religion and religious studies in order to explore key questions of truth and responsibility that lie at the heart of our present ecological crisis. Taken together, the papers collected here challenge us to think beyond the binaries of nature and culture, religion and science, and world religions and indigenous belief systems. We explore how scientific and religious discourses about humans and non-humans conflict or converge in communities impacted by climate change, how everyday experiences with climate change interact with religious notions of bodily health, moral purity and public wellbeing, and how the climate crisis shapes moral aspirations, ethics of care and notions of social responsibility among the faithful. Drawing on ethnographic research in diverse contexts, we seek to address urgent questions about the impact of resurgent religiosity on the ecological futures of both human and non-human organisms.

Climate Change Education as Moral Pedagogy in the West Bengal Sundarbans

Regimes of Truth and Social Responsibility at the Intersection of Global Religions and the Climate Crisis

technical paper

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Calynn Dowler

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Presentations

Climate Change Education as Moral Pedagogy in the West Bengal Sundarbans