Religion in Conservation and Management: A Durkheimian View

}SRNC 6.4 (2012) 398-420] JSRNC (print) ISSN 1749-4907
doi: 10.1558/jsmc.v6i4.398 JSRNC (online) ISSN 1749-4915
Religion in Conservation and Management:
A Durkheimian View
E.N. Anderson
Department of Anthropology,
University of California, Riverside,
1334 Watkins Hall, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
gene@ucr.edu
Abstract
Many traditional societies use religion as the main vehicle for teaching and
sanctioning environmental management. They construct the principles for
sustainable (or ideally sustainable) use as ethical rules given by the gods or
spirits at the dawn of time. Other societies do not do this; some use secular
morality, while others simply have no sustainability rules at all. Modem
societies with cultural roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions often
take the passage in Genesis 1 about 'dominion' over nature as a charter or
even a directive to destroy natural environments and species. It is worth
inquiring how the successful societies manage religion. Durkheim (1995
[1912]) argued that religion is used by societies to encode morality and
motivate people emotionally to follow that morality. Cross-cultural and
cross-religion studies, some cited herein, show that this very often includes
morality relating to conser'ation or resource management. Can we use
their principles to save the planet today?
Keywords
Religion and environment, Emile Durkheim, religion and nature, anthro-
pology of religion, sociology of religion
Religion: A Durkheimian View
Emile Durkheim (1995 [1912]) pointed out long ago that religions can be
explained only as representations of the community. In his now-famous
definition, Durkheim wrote, 'A religion is a unified system of beließ and
practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3, Lancaster Street, Sheffield S3 8AP.

Anderson Religion in Conservation and Management 399
forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community
called a Church, [and] all those who adhere to them' (Durkheim 1995 [1912]:
44, italics in original). For Durkheim, religions reproduce community
structure, hold it together, and get people emotionally involved in their
commurüties. They serve to make their communities seem given and
ordained by the gods: the community is a sacred entity. Religion is used
to construct communities and enlarge them. Durkheim showed that
religion works by harnessing individual emotionality in the service of
constructing and maintaining community. Thus, religion becomes the
great carrier for ethical and moral teachings—the rules of the commu-
rüty. God, or the pantheon, is the collective projection of the community,
and thus the community's laws are seen as God-given.
Religion can be analyzed as having five functions:
1. Constructing community: defining, bounding, bonding.
2. Constructing solidarity: involving people personally and emotion-
ally in the community, by generating, organizing, and synchroniz-
ing emotions.
3. Constructing care: engaging individual emotionality in working
for others and for the common welfare.
4. Constructing responsibility: providing priorities, cognitive predis-
positions, empowerment, senses of duty, and loyalty.
5. Constructing rules: the actual specifics of prescripfion and pro-
scription, obligation and taboo.
All the above require marshaling, engaging, and socializing emotions.
Durkheim spoke of emotional 'effervescence' associated with grand
religious rituals. Stirring up emotions is necessarily done in large part
through arts and ceremorües. A ceremony often seems like an enor-
mously complex version of the same process that migrant sparrows go
through when they arrive on wintering grounds: singing to each other to
organize winter flocks. Sparrows have a simple job: using music to
communicate intense sociable moods. Humans sometimes need little
more, but usually they need a far more intricate institution.
Religion thus engages people at a deep and emotional level, bonding
them together. Durkheim emphasized the wild and frantic side of reli-
gious emotionality, contrasting emotion to what he considered to be
good French rationality. However, actually, the commonest and most
visible emotions associated with religion are calm, peace, solace, awe,
reverence, mercy, rest, and other quiet states. These often serve as 'side
benefits' (Olson 1965) that compensate people for the self-sacrifice that
rebgions demand. Religions may promise 'pie in the sky by and by when
you die' (as the old song says) but they also frequently deliver peace of
mind here and now, and this is often their real appeal. Religion thus calls
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

400 Journalfor the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
up and socially engages intense, deep, personal emotions—indeed, one's
whole being, especially the positive-affective side of it. This is what
binds communities together and motivates the members to do good.
Some have even defined religion in terms of emotions: awe, reverence,
and spirituality (Lowie 1948 [1924]). However, this is inadequate (as
Lowie 1948 [1924] pointed out); there are vast and complex systems of
belief to describe and understand, ceremonies to study, and philosophies
to interpret
The present article refers to religion the social construct, not religion as
truth or falsehood and, in this sense, does not depend on what the God
or Gods may be.
The 'supematurals', so often used to define religion, are epiphenome-
nal. Humans naturally infer agency and will when they see any cause-
effect link attribute person-like qualities to anything active in their lives,
a point made by scholars of religion from the ancient Greeks to today
(see, for example, Atran 2002; Tylor 1871). Even in modem secular
America, 79% of people scold their computers and 73% swear at them
(Waytz et al. 2010). At the same time, many thirk that computers and the
Internet will save the world—a new Christ. Gods and spirits are similar:
agentive projections of the community, both human and transhuman
(Durkheim 1995 [1912]). Self-conscious atheists and agnostics may have
similar beliefs. Stephen Hawking admits that his unifying 'Theory of
Everything' (or 'M-theory') is really the same as the deist concept of
God.^ It is Lucretius's concept of God in De Rerum Natura; it is also close
to the Wakan Tanka of the Lakota (Pierotti 2011), the power of Kwa-ootz
among the Nuu-chah-nulth (Atleo 2004), and many other Indigenous
concepts. Moreover, supernatural entities are not confined to religion.
The human mind seems programmed to infer or invent beings that seem
to explain observed phenomena, or to mediate between cause and effect.
The atheist Richard Dawkins, for instance, claimed to deny all super-
natural beings, but invented a purely imaginary concept, the 'même', to
explain how information and, ultimately, a belief system is reproduced
(Dawkins 1976, 2006). Ironically, mêmes are as imaginary and improb-
able as any ghosts, elves, or kelpies. The concept relies on a mystical and
unquestioning 'just so' acceptance that is not unlike tht explanatory
framework for supernatural beings. Most economists, following Adam
Smith (1776), speak of the 'invisible hand' of the market, usually without
even realizing that Smith was ironically using a common term for God!
Many other constructs of theory are equally phantasmic. Scott Atran
points out that American children often believe in Santa Claus and the
1. See his statements in his interview with Time, 10 November 2010: 8.

Tooth Fairy without these being considered part of 'religion' (Atran
2002). In fact, belief in supernaturáis seems as common outside of what
many consider 'religion' as within it.
Moreover, many traditional societies venerate or worship real things:
coyotes, ravens, mountains, waterfalls, the sky, and so on. To these they
attribute great spiritual and creative powers, but they think these are
quite natural, not 'supernatural'. These societies have nothing 'secular'
in the sense of being without spiritual or reverential components. Sticks
and pebbles have some tiny bit of spirituality. This belief in near-univer-
sal spirit agency has long been termed 'animism' (Tylor 1871), a term
increasingly used by scholars to describe such perception (see, e.g.,
Abram 1996; Bird-David 1999; Harvey 2006; B. Taylor 2010; Willerslev
2007). These societies may not always be assuming agency improperly;
animals do have agency, in the sense that they can act and, to some
extent, plan their actions to have particular effects. Spirits are generally
assumed to have more cognitive and planning ability, but not always;
often the spirit is simply the animating force of the animal or even the
quiet growth of a plant.
Traditional cultures may make a distinction between 'the sacred' and
the rest of life, as Durkheim (1995 [1912]) maintained, but many societies
do not make hard and fast distinctions between religion and science or
between supematurals and ordinary beings. Under these circumstances,
it is not surprising that a great deal of hard-headed pragmatic and
empirical knowledge gets merged into spiritual discourses. Conserva-
tion, which we of the modem scientific world see as a scientific matter, is
a religious issue in most of the world. Disappearance of heavily hunted
game, for example, is conceived in modem biology as a result of over-
himting that causes a steadily shrinking breeding pool of game animals;
the Northwest Coast peoples see it as a result of overhunting also, but
the direct cause is considered to be that the spirits take offense at
disrespectful behavior.
Conservation
Conservation is here defined as foregoing immediate advantage in order
to have more later, or more for others—in other words, sacrificing short-
term and narrow interests for long-term, more wide-flung interests. Eric
Smith and Mark Wishnie (2000) defined conservation as practices that
maintain a resource that is being used, and that are designed to maintain
it—either for sustainable use or preservation. It involves some degree of
self-sacrifice. All societies need to require self-sacrifice, most obviously
in defensive war. A society of rationally self-interested individuals

would be immediately conquered by neighbors who had more solidarity
(Bowles and Gintis 2011). Societies also demand self-sacrifice in first-
responder efforts and in healing, feeding the needy, and so on. All agri-
cultural and herding societies have to conserve at least their seed and
breed stock; this was an early form of conservation (Alvard and Kuznar
2001).
Traditional societies range widely in the degree to which they con-
serve. Thoughtful criticisms of indigenous conservatiorüsm have come
from several observers (summarized in Hames 2007 and Kay and
Simmons 2002). Raymond Hames, in particular, doubts whether small-
scale societies ever conserve anything. This is clearly too extreme, but
Hames reports data on dozens of societies around the world that do not
manage for the long term. The idea of the 'noble savage in harmony with
nature' has long been abandoned in favor of a view of traditional people
as very much like the rest of us: sometimes careless, sometimes deliber-
ately careful and responsible. Stephen Beckerman et al. (2002) have
shown that societies which do not have a concept of conserving tend to
have very low population densities and live in quite diverse and produc-
tive environments. In such cases there is no particular advantage to
conserving. In most of these places, people simply could not deplete the
resources. In others, if they did they would starve to death so fast that
the resource base would recover rapidly.
Societies that are highly nomadic can merely move away from prob-
lems. They can then keep assessing the old territories for game recovery
and move back when it recovers. This is a form of management but not
true conservation. Conversely, more technologically complex societies
living at higher density, especially in harsh environments, had to
conserve more and better. Many Native American groups, such as the
Northwest Coast and Maya peoples, have been in their current habitats
at high population densities for thousands of years and are technologi-
cally sophisticated enough to wipe out their environments—as is proved
by the fact that they have occasionally done so. Indeed, the Maya
collapse of 800-900 CE was probably due in part to envirorunental
overshoot (Diamond 2005).^
A critical problem for conservationists is enforcement. First, most
individuals have to be responsible enough to self-police, because stop-
ping everyone in an entire society from breaking conservation laws
would be impossible. Second, society has to be able to unite in stopping
the inevitable few scofflaws.
2. Diamond's analysis was only partially refuted by articles in McAnany and
Yoffee 2010.

Another difficult situation for nonreligious conservation has to do
with emergencies. When a resource is stretched thin, and an emergency
makes that resource suddenly more valuable (or even desperately
needed), the temptation to overdraw it is hard to resist.
On the other hand, religious conservation functions to prevent stretch-
ing the resource too thin in the first place, and can function to save a
little of it even in emergency situations.
In traditional societies, religion is the obvious and almost the only
channel for doing things of this sort—for cases in which unplanned or
imregulated challenges suddenly appear. Law enforcement is often
sporadic. Individual freedom is respected. Chiefs may have real power,
but not enough to stop poachers. Religion has the great advantage of
teaching high ideals and values on the one hand, and threatening divine
retribution (the anger matters less than the harm) on the other. This is
where many traditional societies have an advantage over modem indus-
trial ones when it comes to establishing and enforcing conservationist
mores.
Global Case Studies
Mixed resource conservafion success characterizes many societies,
ranging from intensive hunter-gatherer groups to intensive traditional
agriculturalists, ancient chiefdoms, and agrarian civilizafions.
Many, possibly most, traditional societies do not see community as
limited to humans. They see the community as including local animals,
trees, mountains, and other beings (Callicott 1994; Hallowell 1955). Their
religions construct a more-than-human communion. Moral considera-
tions extend to 'other-than-human persons', including them in the class
of Kantian subjects—^beings for whom one has to be responsible and to
treat as ends (Anderson 1996; Tucker and Grim 1994; Waldau and Patton
2007). This extension sharply separates West from East in religious
doctrines. The Abrahamic religions are often seen by many of their prac-
titioners as well as outsiders as privileging humanity alone. By contrast,
many religions originating in East and South Asia treat at least some
nonhumans as ends in themselves. In India, Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist
reverence for life continued to be quite general until very recently, and is
still often a factor in saving trees and wildlife (Chappie 2002; Chappie
and Tucker 2000; Tucker and Williams 1997).
Belief in sacred groves exists throughout East and South Asia (Ander-
son 2009) and once was universal also in Europe and much of Africa. It
is clearly a conservafionist belief, in spite of many less-than-perfect cases.
Andrew Vayda (2009) has noted that some sacred groves are far from

communities and so not of much use, so protecting them was cheap or
trivial. But most Asian sacred groves are directly adjacent to settlements.
Many are integrated into a wider overall forest planning strategy, as
among the Akha (Wang 2007, 2008) and Karen (Pinkaew 2001) of
northern Southeast Asia. These sacred groves are not inviolate. They
supply timber, firewood, fruit, shade, leaves, fodder for animals, and
countless other amenities. They are working forests but they are
protected from wanton cutting or burning or other destruction. They are
usually in excellent shape with high biodiversity. Buddhists draw on
their religion to save trees in modem Thailand and elsewhere
(Darlington 1998).
In China, saving sacred groves is part of the folk landscape science of
fengshui. Traditional/en^s/iuz is a set of pragmatic beliefs explained by
what we Westerners would call supernatural causes (Anderson 1996).
The modem fengshui has become a more 'magical' practice with less
obvious practical function and more material based on matters of belief
or assertion. Notable was a belief that old trees and groves had to be
preserved because they have powerful indwelling spirits that can greatly
help their protectors or harm their destroyers. Thanks to this belief,
every traditional village and temple had large groves protecting the
uphill side and often extending down along the edges of the community.
Huge old trees were always protected. Conservationist attitudes, includ-
ing the beliefs basic tofengshui, go back to ancient times (for example,
Liu 2010; Mencius 1971). The idea of harmony (heping and variants of
that word) between Heaven, Earth, and Humanity has been basic to
Chinese cosmology and philosophy for at least 2500 years and leads to a
whole philosophy of plarming and working with nature, including
urban planning, agriculture, forestry, and similar areas of enterprise
(Girardot, Miller, and Liu 2001; Menzies 1994; Tucker and Berthrong
1998). In general, Chinese religion and philosophy separate religion from
secular domains, and spirituality from magic and from natural knowl-
edge, but with weak and porous boundaries. Yet the Chinese conserved
village groves and not remote forests; they protected some animals, not
others (Elvin 2004; Marks 1998). They had to manage water and soil well
in rice agroecosystems (Anderson 1988) because survival depended on
this, but they did not always manage well in rainfall-fed upland
agriculture.
The Chinese of Hong Kong (Anderson 2007) avoided undercutting
slopes and otherwise doing damage to land and landscape because they
believed dragons would punish such activity. Slope failure and land-
slides due to careless construction were explained as the reaction of the
dragon to injury. The Chinese regarded dragons as perfectly real;

Anderson ReUgion in Conservation and Management 405
fisherfolk believed sturgeons to be one t)^e of dragon. In general, what
would be called supernatural beings in English are distinguished from
other beings by being invisible and intangible, and by being worshiped
with incense and sacrifices. This generally makes a clear distinction, but
sturgeons and sawfish, when caught, are offered up in the temple and
treated as sacred objects—though they are not really worshiped. Thus
the Chinese do not make the same separations of supernatural and
natural, or of sacred and secular, as does the modem Western world.
The development of Chinese landscape management involves a long
history of elites, local resource users, and other persons with complex
agendas, as well as wider cosmological beliefs. All this causes complex-
ity, but in general, when China has managed resources well, there has
been a religious or cosmological reason for it; without that, resources
tend to be heavily exploited, declining over time.
Among traditional smaller-scale societies, the Yucatec Maya of
Quintana Roo are notable for self-conscious conservafion management
that stresses sustainability rather than preservation. They use the entire
landscape, but have strict rules about long-term management of forests
and fields. There are in theory equally strict guidelines about game
animals, but too many people ignore the latter, leading to overhunting
especially in communities that have faced some breakdown in traditions
due to outside pressure.
Belief in spiritual power is still strong. The Maya regard highly trees of
the genus Bunchosia as siipche', 'Deer God trees', at least partly because of
their value in healing skin conditions; this healing value is due to
alkaloids isolated by the Swiss chemist Anita Ankli (2000). The Maya
maintain high respect for the guardian spirits of field and forest, are
careful to ask their permission before clearing forest for agriculture, and
thank them for harvests and for safety in the field. This has carried over
from ancient Maya religion into both Catholic and Protestant Christian-
ity (Anderson 2005; Anderson and Medina Tzuc 2005; also Anderson
1996, 2010). Catholic Maya hold ceremonies that still name and revere
the spirit beings. Protestant Maya are more apt to thank God as sole
Power, but the actual ceremonies are often the same.
The Yucatec Maya language uses the same word, chaak, for actual
storms and for the storm gods; the same word, iik', for ordinary winds
and disembodied spirit forces; and the same word, yum, for gods and for
human lords (though this latter is now rather an obsolete concept).
Maize retains its religious quality as a sacred food.
North American Native peoples have various forms of a rather similar
and widely shared comprehensive conservation ethic (Pieroth 2011).
They are theoretically prevented by religious beliefs from overhunting

game. There are no rigid game laws; people are free to take what they
need. But if they take more than they need, or hunt or kill wantonly, or
waste game or fish, the spirits of the arümals will punish them—at first
by withholding further game and if that fails by actually killing the
hunter. The punishment of withholding further game is explicitly justi-
fied by highly circumstantial stories describing people or communities
that wasted game and were punished by having no more. This is clearly
a reference to overhunting; biologists would say the cause was depletion
of animal populations, but the Native people disagree and say it was
because the animals were not treated with respect (see Atleo 2004;
Nadasdy 2004) and their spirits therefore punished the hunters. Over-
hunting, waste, and poor treatment of game are marks of disrespect
(Atieo 2004).
For Native peoples, this concept of 'respect' is complex, involving
more than the English word (see, e.g., Atieo 2004; Pierotti 2011). Animals
are part of one's own society. Many groups believe they are descended
from or otherwise closely related to certain arümals. Also, of course, the
full force of belief in gods, spirits, and cosmic laws is involved. The
animal powers created the world and all in it, and they made it a highly
moralized cosmos. Respect, then, is not just the respect we give to a
shade tree. It is more like the respect that devout, old-fashioned Chris-
tians give to their local church and its Communion chalice—a respect
that mixes love for one's community and social group with reverence for
Divine blessings.
Northwest Coast groups do not see spirits as less real than material
beings, and they see all living things as having spirits. Often these beings
can reincarnate, frequently changing species in the process; humans
often reincarnate as wolves, whales, or other powerful animals. They
also see plants as persons deserving of consideration (Turner 2005).
One would thus expect to find conservation being practiced in places
where there is a real threat of wiping out the whole community through
selfish overuse of resources. Such is exactly the theme of countless
stories in Native American society. In these cases, the community will
naturally come down on the individual over-hunter and stop him from
such mischief.
In many of these cases, we have to return to rational but collective
rather than individual self-interest to explain exactly why some things
stayed sacred. Wildlife and forests in India, as well as cows (Harris
1966), were too useful to ignore, and an ideology of nonviolence got
established early and became self-reinforcing because it stayed useful.
Groves near villages are obviously useful but also obviously easy to
overuse. Springs, good farmland, and concentrated fish resources are

Anderson .^^Religion in Conservation and Management 407
other examples of goods by which people can rapidly see the effects of
bad use and thus enforce group welfare against individuals who poach
or overuse. Resources like game animals are less successfully saved:
there is less imperative need for them and it is easier for those individu-
als who are least deterred by morality to hide in the woods and poach at
will. It is in such cases that the need to develop individual conscience,
including the motivation to intervene, is particularly necessary.
The Western World: Problemsfor Traditions
The current devastafion of the environment through 'moderrüzation'
and 'development' also has deep religious roots, showing that religion
can work against the environment as well as for it. Much of European
religion and philosophy turned against nature in the few centuries just
before and just after the dawn of the Common Era. This was caused by a
particularly sour anti-world, anfi-fiesh, anti-nature view that crystallized
from neo-Platonism and ancient Near Eastern religions, especially
Iranian dualism (Coates 1998; Glacken 1967). These, going back to Plato
and Zoroaster, if not earlier, held that the realm of ideas and spirit is
good and pure, whereas the realm of fiesh and nature is impure and bad.
In Zoroastrianism a righteous man is the purest fieshly thing, with dogs
coming in second; women are far behind (Boyce 1979).
An early expression of this anti-nature view occurs in the passage
about humanity being given 'dominion' over nature, in Genesis 1.26-28.
This may be from Judea's origin myth and probably was introduced by
priests in or after the Babylorüan capfivity. The older and much more
prevalent tradition in the New Testament is that found in Genesis 2,
Israel's own origin myth, in which Adam is put into the Garden of Eden
'to dress and keep it' (Genesis 2.15) and forbidden to do what he wants
with it. He is, for example, not allowed to eat certain fruit. He and Eve
are stewards and gardeners in the Lord's domain, not independent
rulers.
A stunning insight into the stewardship concept was provided by
former sheep farmer Phillip Keller in A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 (1970).
This book spells out the knowledge of sheep ecology that lies behind the
psalm that begins, 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want'. The few
lines of the psalm call up such a detailed picture of caring for sheep that
it takes a whole book to explain it to a modem reader. The ancient Israel-
ites were a sheepherding people and could appreciate the full richness of
this poem. There are countless other passages in the Bible that are
charters for creation care, but modem readers rarely understand their
full metaphoric significance.

Jewish ecological ideology has followed from this stewardship ideal
(Tirosh-Samuelson 2002) and Islam follows it too (Foltz 2006; Foltz,
Denny, and Baharuddin 2003), though practice in theJewish and Muslim
world of the Middle East has sometimes fallen as it currently does well
short of ideology. In fact, given the massive deforestation these cultures
precipitated long before the current period, perhaps the implication of
the modifier 'currently' and its use here should be reconsidered.
Although much Christian ideology and practice has followed the stew-
ardship charge (Hessel and Reuther 2000; see also www.earthministry.
org), many churches have interpreted 'dominion' in a more anti-environ-
mental sense. The 'dominion' attitude, often in extreme forms, has
become more common in recent centuries. The anti-nature philosophy of
the neo-Platonic and Dualist world was foreign to early Christianity and
Judaism but became more and more influential in the later Roman
Empire and on through the Middle Ages. Those were the traditions that
separated humans sharply from animals and downgraded or abolished
the human-animal gods; Pan became the Devil. The high value on
destroying nature has propagated even more in communism, fascism,
and other 'atheist' modern ideological systems than in religion.
There was a reaction against these philosophies in the Middle Ages
which has led to a widely circulated story in the environmentalist
literature to the effect that the Middle Ages were a period of innocent
love of nature (Merchant 1996). The truth is more interesting. The Celtic
and Germanic societies of north and west Europe were developing
mature states, and they imported their traditional pro-nature views into
European civilization. The Celtic influence in particular was profound.
Also, medieval environmentalism involved a major revalorization of
Greek and Roman nature writings from very early times, especially
through the works of Ovid. Ovid had retold in the early Roman Empire
many of the old conservation teaching stories of the ancient Greeks. He
may have almost single-handedly saved the whole idea of conservation
in Mediterranean Europe during the centuries after his time. The rebirth
of interest in nature was, however, basically confined to the Celtic and
Germaiùc world; it did not influence the Byzantine Empire, for instance.
This medieval period of love for nature waned, and unfortunately the
'scientific revolution' of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought
back the neo-Platonic and Christian alienation from nature. Rene
Descartes followed Catholic dogma in holding that animals had no
souls, and thus taught that they were mere machines (Descartes 1999
[1637]: 40-42). Some scholars argue that this was a reaction to the horrific
events of the 1300s and 1400s: the bubonic plague sieges, the constant
wars, the famines (Pierotti 2011: 45-46), and the religious wars of the
©Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

1400s through 1600s. Nature and the world seemed hostile. Others have
blamed the rise of proto-capitalism. There were other factors, including
the reinvigoration of Roman Empire attitudes in the Renaissance (Coates
1998). By far the most important cause and correlate, however, was the
rise of absolutist politics, in which a central government exercises very
widespread control over behavior and speech and suppresses dissent
(see P. Anderson 1974). The 'dominion' and Cartesian views track the
change from feudalism to absolutism perfectly, notably in the way that
the phrase 'dominion over nature' tracks dominion over persons. The
world becomes a top-down hierarchy. Communities, whether human or
ecological, whether in religion or in secular life, are arranged in a rigid
order of control.
One result of the early battles over absolutism was Puritanism, which
led to condemnation of natural beauty and religious art. This cost the
Western world, among other things, the realization that aesthetic experi-
ence is often central to religion and is a vitally important part of Durk-
heimian community-building and community representation. Without
aesthetics, encouraging the more positive religious emotions becomes
much more difficult.
Thus, much of the modem hostility to working with nature, even
when it would be profitable so to do, has deep religious and ideological
roots in Western tradifion. The ideology of 'struggling against nature' (to
use the Marxist phrase) has developed from an interaction of one rather
extreme interpretation of biblical tradition with the desire for profit
among elites who often had little vested interest in maintaining systems
of landscape management. It would seem that both an unequivocal reli-
gious tradition and a decision-making class dependent on maintaining
ecosystem function are necessary for sustainable management.
When Religion Works
Religion can give calm, peace, strength, love, and hope, and thus empow-
erment and consolation. Above all, however, it can drive long-term and
communal self-interest against short-term narrow self-interest (Anderson
1996, 2010). Cultures must develop a more general sense of social
responsibility and trade on it to maintain environmental responsibility.
Both religion and standard conservafion and environmentalist ideology
do this. Even in traditional societies that see trees as people, it is hard to
imagine anyone being as responsible about trees and flowers as they are
about their own children or human neighbors. Normally, people are
responsible for the environment orüy when they are socially responsible
in general.

Religion, to a much greater extent than the modem environmentalist
movement, can effectively sanction behavior. Modem environmentalists
can get people to stop littering or starting arson fires by appeals to
conscience and by passing laws. However, there are always a few who
disregard morals and conscience. Here religion comes into its own,
because it gives ordinary people the duty to intervene actively to stop a
person damaging the common good. Religious zeal or fear of divine
vengeance empowers such people to intervene, and guilt sometimes
leads the poacher to give in. In modem, secular America, however,
people are often too diffident to protest when they see people breaking
environmental laws, and when they do protest, they often are personally
threatened (with varying degrees of seriousness). Secular humanists may
have good morals, but they have no way of enforcing them on those they
perceive as less moral. They are handicapped not only by lack of solidar-
ity but by an ideology of freedom, equality, tolerance, and individual-
ism; they find it difficult to unite against others, even if the others are
perceived as total scoundrels.
Religion may not be the only source of moral values but it has, so far,
proved to be often a good way to motivate people to act morally. It is
hard to develop a conscience or enforce good behavior toward others
outside of a religious framework. Various economic, atheistic, or nation-
alistic moralities have been developed, and may serve to unite people for
some good purposes, and they often work very well, but they may be
unable to bring us beyond a certain point; only time and further studies
will tell.
Religion is concerned with ultimate questions, and religious people
understand themselves to be in pursuit of some ultimate good. Medita-
tion on higher principles is far from universal among the faithful, but is
not uncommon, especially in small-scale traditional societies. Even in
religions that make the believers 'take on faith', the basics of the creed
normally make the believers think how to apply those basics. Religion
directs many such meditators to go beyond the ordinary everyday social
world to see clearly what is really out there in front of them. This may be
described as a vision quest, a Tantric experience, Buddhist enlighten-
ment, recognition of the glory of the Creator in His works, or a holistic
experience of the world as made by the Rainbow Serpent or the Coyote.
In any case, it gives one direct, intense experience of the landscape and
nature. This is the heart of Chinese painting, for instance. The painters
were trying to see through the screen of everyday life into the great Dao,
the Way of nature.
Mystical religious experience is often said to erase distinctions,
give clear sight of the world, and thus eliminate invidious group

distinctions—not only within humanity but within all life. Mysticism
and the so-called world religions are important because they not only
teach unity, they can sometimes make it a real experience. Through
immersion in them, one may realize that some people and things are
socially closer, some socially more distant. Some may be better, some
more evil. But this is not the same as making categorical distinctions on
the basis of trivial or irrelevant reasons. The bottom line is that we are all
in this together.
This perception of unity does not depend on being religious, though
religion has often encouraged it. To imderstand better how to cultivate
the solidarity needed for a pro-environmental worldview, we have to
move into less charted territory by breaking down traditional religion
and modem conservation into component parts—analysis in the literal
sense (Greek for 'splitting up'). The first and most obvious of these parts
is emotional involvement (Anderson 1996, 2010; Milton 2002).
People are fundamentally irrational in that they are driven by
emotions and desires rather than rational calculation of self-interest
(Anderson 1996,2010; M. Taylor 2006; Westen 2007). The only time the
latter is the sole determinant of choice is in the service of utterly trivial
goals, like buying the cheaper toothbrush or sack of potatoes. Besides the
obvious fact that people are creatures of emotion, there is the point that
fully rational self-interest cannot work in the real world because it
demands perfect information. People are, and have to be, brilliant
approximators. A hunter a hundred thousand years ago on the African
savanna had to find food, avoid lions, and dodge stampeding elephants,
with nothing to go on but local-group wisdom; clearly, the premium was
on quick action and reaction, not rational thought.
A clear example of the failure of rational interest is world fisheries.
Commercial fisheries regularly succumb to overfishing (see Worm et al.
2006,2009). By contrast, most traditional fisheries self-regulate, often for
religious reasons, but also from simple community awareness (see
McCay and Acheson 1987; Ruddle and Akimichi 1984; Ruddle and Johan-
nes 1983), although many do not (Foale et al. 2011). Also, many modem
sport fisheries are well managed. When rational economic calculus is the
only motivation the temptation is strong to takefishnow (McEvoy 1986).
The future is discounted. On the other hand, when irrational factors—
religion, tradition, or ftin—are involved, people will sometimes
conserve. Forestry does somewhat better, because trees are more visible,
countable, and ownable than fish, but here, too, strictly commercial
enterprises often put themselves out of business through overcutting.
Traditional societies, however, almost always maintain their forests,
except in areas of extremely dense and impoverished populations.

In these successful cases, and many others, 'irrational'—^but effective—
collective interest trumps rational self-interest (M. Taylor 2006). The
group takes care of itself. Since people can negotiate, share information,
accommodate to each other's viewpoints, and draw on varied abilities
and skills, collective self-interest can be vastly more informed, accurate,
and useful than individual knowledge. This is why people are social,
and why we have culture.
However, unless there is constant feedback from reality, collective
knowledge is apt to go in the direction of wish-fulfillment and emotional
projection. This occurs in politics and resource management. Fisherfolk
and fisheries experts routinely overestimate the size and resilience of fish
stocks. Foresters overestimate the resilience of forests. Farmers under-
estimate soil erosion. A modem case of derüal is seen in the global
Warnung debate (Oreskes and Conway 2010). About half of Americans
and Europeans recognize global warming is real and partly caused by
humans. The other half denies this, and some of this half is waxing ever
more emotional and irrational about the matter. In the 1990s, when the
skeptical position was still scientifically reasonable because there was far
less compelling evidence, debates were less emotional than today.
The Problem with Religion
We caruiot expect religion to make people perfect. Religion may postu-
late angels but it cannot make people into angels. What it can do is direct
people's attention toward particular things, give those things priority,
and make people save them ifit is a matter of collective welfare versus
individual selfishness. Rarely, though occasionally, religious conserva-
tion can make people truly act against their own self-interest. An envi-
ronmentally unfortunate example is that of Hindu worship of cobras,
which leads to saving them and thus to India's having more snakebite
deaths than the rest of the world combined.
Unfortunately, religion, as a collective representation of commurùty,
inevitably represents less pleasant as well as beneficent aspects of
commurùty. It is prone to be used in the service of community hatreds.
This is especially true if the community feels itself threatened and per-
ceives itself in decline. The modem extremist religions share more with
nationalism than with traditional religion; they are defensive institu-
tions. As Marx and modem atheists like Richard Dawkins (1976,2006)
argue, a great deal of the world's religious dialogue has been taken over
by cynical or fanatic individuals who bend it to their own ends. Such
people are generally far from the teachings of their alleged faiths. We do
the world a huge disservice by calling them 'fundamentalists'.
© Equinox Publishing Ud 2012.

There are two reasons for bigotry. Eirst is the classic Marxian one:
elites find it expedient to harness religion to their agendas and 'bum at
the stake' anyone who dares quesfion this arrangement. Second is a very
different thing, well known to Edward Gibbon (1995 [1776-88]) but little
menfioned by Marx: the development of marginal, dispersed commimi-
ties, integrated and organized by religion, and therefore extremely
'enthusiasfic', to use Gibbon's term. Since nothing but religion holds
them together, and since they are self-consciously a community set
against Üe secular or heathen or herefic world, they are defensive and
zealous. Naturally, the rulers and these dispersed fanatical communifies
soon find each other, and then one has anfi-environmental religion, al-
Qaeda, and much in between.
Although religion should lead to privileging community interests—
that is, long-term and wide-flung interests—above short-term and
narrow ones, it too often does the opposite. Short-term greed looks like
'purity' and 'defending the true faith'. It is amazing how fast is the tran-
sifion from zeal to hyped requests for donations. Similarly, religion
should give people strength instead of encouraging them to give up on
the world, but giving up can look a great deal like 'purity' or 'resigna-
tion'. Religion should move one up the scale toward more self-control
and more long-term and wide vision, but religion in this imperfect world
very often does exactly the opposite. Religion can make bitter puls sweet
and self-sacrifice honorable. Unfortunately, in some conditions, it can
teach its followers to displace all discomfiture from themselves to their
opponents.
When Religion is Needed, When It Is Not
The ability of religion to use emofion to hook people into collective
movements was borrowed by kings and emperors long ago and used to
drive patriotism and eventually nationalism. People sometimes
constructed 'imagined commimifies' (B. Anderson 1991) and whipped
up loyalty to them by means borrowed directly from religion. Thus,
Lloyd Warner called the United States' patriofic tradifion 'civil religion'
(Wamer 1953). Religion, however, calls forth all forms of social emofions
and is expressed in hjmrins, masses, and the like, whereas patriotism is
about defense, loyalty, and marfiality, and is expressed through martial
music. It tends to involve only a small fracfion of one's emofions, usually
the defensive ones, while religion engages a wider range, and in pracfice
there are many blends and accommodations.
More recently, the techniques that religion uses to build solidarity and
drive moral agendas have been coopted by polifical and social

movements, ranging from huge ideological movements to small-scale
ones like labor uruons and Alcoholics Anonymous. All these quite self-
consciously borrowed techniques from religion. Another interesting case
is the Grameen Bank. Created by the economist Mohamed Yunus in
Bangladesh, this economic institution has become something of a mass
movement, with chants, rules, and meetings that give it a religion-like
quality.^ However, all these spinoffs are self-consciously less than a full-
scale religion. They tend to borrow consciously religious practice with-
out assuming religious doctrine; the Grameen movement, for instance,
flourishes in Bangladesh within a firmly Islamic society.
Modem societies have had some stunning conservation successes
without even using religion—just using people's consciences and senses
of public decency. The most widely visible one is the anti-litter move-
ment. Until the 1950s and 1960s, people in much of America simply
threw their litter and garbage any place they wished. Anti-litter move-
ments started in the 1950s, and by 1970 littering was illegal in most
places. It is impossible to enforce anti-litter laws, since there are so many
people doing so many things on the land. In fact, any dark night allows
scofflaWS to carry whole truckloads of trash onto public lands and dump
them there. Yet, a revolution in American conscience has made this
rather rare (though it remains common in some local rural areas).
One might also point to success in conserving ducks, trout, bass, and
several other game species. In fact, with white-tail deer, there is an
'overconservation' problem. Deer have become a serious pest in parts of
the eastem and central United States, although the larger ecological issue
here is the failure to replace the role of human hunting with other top-
level animal predators. Not only hunters have saved wildlife; we in the
western hemisphere have managed to save the birds of prey and the
migrant birds from total extermination, beginning with the Migratory
Bird Treaty of 1907. AH this was done without benefit of religion. Appeal
to aesthetics and sarutation in the case of litter and to the selfish interests
of hunters in the case of ducks and deer were apparently adequate.
However, the current problems of saving forests, stopping global
warming, conserving water, and controlling pollution are not proving so
tractable. They involve major self-sacrifice by many people. It is highly
doubtful whether anything short of a major revolution of conscience will
be enough. In traditional communities, to the degree that they manage
for sustainability, religion seems to be the method that is working. In
these places, religion functions as a 'total institution' largely devoted to
3. According to B. Anderson and E.N. Anderson, who made these observations
in Bangladesh during a training course with the Grameen Bank.

building solidarity tlir'ough mutual aid and ritual bonding. However, a
few modem conservation organizations, including the Audubon Society
and the Sierra Club, have succeeded without being religious or adopting
any religion and indeed—unlike the Grameen Bank—without drawing
much on religious practice for producing unity. They are highly success-
ful in sustairung themselves, attracting more members, changing with
the times, and influencing the wider society through moral suasion and
political campaigns. They are grassroots organizations, not creatures of
'big money' like certain less highly regarded NGOs (on problematical
conservation today, see Brockington, Duff, and Igoe 2008).
There are common themes that allow these organizations to behave
like traditional religion-imbued societies. First, they construct society
with relevance to nature. They see nature as intrinsically worthwhile and
valuable in and for itself. 'Nature'—whatever that is held to be—may
ennoble people, or give them refuge and respite, orbe a source of beauty
and inspiration. 'Nature' thus has clear economic benefits, but that is not
sufficient to tip the balance. Instead of constructing a model ofpeople vs.
nature, cultures and groups will have to work hard at constructing a
model in which that distinction is erased and humans are part of the
wider world. Emotion is most certainly involved, and the emotions most
involved are positive ones. Both traditional, small-scale societies and the
Audubon and Sierra movements purport to love and cherish natural
things. By contrast, environmental movements that trade on fear do not
fare so well. This includes the movements that focus on pollution, global
warming, and the like. Eear makes people lash out thoughtlessly, and
often with bigotry. Eear makes people attack scapegoats instead of real
problems (see Westen 2007). Hope, on the other hand, can motivate
people to improve and do better.
This means that an environmentally friendly worldview must advance
a vision of the future as a good world (on this and what follows, see B.
Taylor 2010). Religions use Heaven or the world after a Messiah or
Millennium to advance this vision, but even religions work better when
they provide images of human potential in this world. Native American
and Aboriginal Australian religions often focus on getting young
believers into such positive visionary states through spiritual quests or
ritual initiations, and their ceremonies renew these activities.
In successful conservation, arts are often involved. The art of the
Australian Aboriginals portrays the Dreaming—the world of creation
and renewal that lies behind the visible world. Chinese classical land-
scape art is well known also. Many traditional cultures have elaborate
and striking art that is used ceremonially to convey messages about
nature, including conservation messages, fhe modem NGO equivalents

are the Sierra Club and Audubon calendars and similar nature art. Ansel
Adams's and Galen Rowell's photographs of mountain scenery demand
a kind of dedication and devotion that Sunday photographers do not
have. They are correspondingly effective. Art is the way that culture
structures the communication of emotion and mood, as well as a vehicle
for carrying more concrete messages such as charts of the cosmos. All
groups that succeed in conserving seem to find that at least some struc-
tured manipulation of positive emotions through aesthetic experience is
necessary.
A Personal Note
If we want to work for the environmental cause, we will have to reform
world religions, and we will also have to use the lessons of religion to
devise secular groups and movements that can build solidarit)^ give
hope, and harness positive emotions and human good in the service of
collective well-being (B. Taylor 2010). In addition to the Society for the
Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (which is not an activist or conser-
vationist orgaruzation, though many involved have such a dimension to
their lives and scholarship), there is the Earth Ministry movement based
in Seattle, which has spread from a Christian base to enlist Buddhist,
Muslim, and other congregations. There are also Mother Pelican, the
Creation Care movement, and dozens of others. These involve not only
mainstream congregations but many evangelical and nondenomina-
tional churches as well as non-Christian groups. Buddhism, Hinduism,
and Jainism continue their classic positions of defending and protecting
all beings and have advanced their agendas to take into account global
warming and other current problems. Some of these use the various
methods of religion to draw together and unite environmentalists. They
work toward healing the splits in the movement between scientists and
commoners, deep ecologists and ordinary conservationists, or wise-use
and preservation advocates. Many new nonreligious movements take
into account the need to involve the whole connmurdty emotionally.
There are several Green Campus and Green University movements
worldwide. Sustainability movements are getting more and more
community-conscious.
In 1844, Karl Marx wrote: 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless
conditions. It is the opium of the people' (cited in Elster 1986: 301). Too
few realize today that opium was a soothing syrup for children in
Marx's time, not a dangerous illegal drug. He went on to call the relig-
ions of his time a chain hidden in flowers but holding back the working

classes. He then continued: 'Crificism has torn up the imaginary flowers
from the chain not so much that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak
chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower'
(cited in Elster 1986: 301-302). Unfortimately, Marxists did exactly the
opposite: they eliminated the flowers and kept the chain. It is our job to
do what Marx said he wanted. We must save the flowers and shake off
the chain.
Acknowledgments
I offer my deep grafitude to Rick Stepp and Bron Taylor for their
considerable editing of this manuscript.
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