Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: A rich appreciation of Mother Earth—in the entwined contexts of Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Western intellectual, and contemporary ecological movements—is accomplished in this paper using new perspectives and strategies: Mother Earth as name, meme, and conspiracy. This approach is developed and illustrated to offer insight into the dynamics of identity formation of individual cultures, amalgams of cultures, academic approaches, and ecological movements that span the globe, always occurring in the context of threatening, yet creative, encounters. Projecting beyond the Mother Earth example, the paper proposes a vision of the academic study of cultures and religions that focuses on gesture and repetition demonstrating that conditions of coherence, in the presence of the constant threat of incoherence, may be more valuable than discerning meaning.
DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.19924
Author: Sam Gill
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4392740338