Abstract
The process of Karenization calls for a dynamic process of reconstructing the local knowledge of the indigenous communities. This reconstruction is aimed at a sustained advocacy and reassertion of the indigenous agency, culture, tradition and history of the Karen people. The challenges range from the ritual reconstruction intended for the Karen’s liberative struggle against the techno-economy of Thailand. Moreover, the Karenization process also offers insightful critique of the excessive anthropocentrism latent in the sciences, religions, spiritualities and theologies. Furthermore, the process of Karenization levels its criticism of the inadequate worldview in the phenomenology of religion, the notion of space and of sustainable development, the lack of indigenization of Christianity, the church’s patriarchal structure and hierarchical leadership of the local church.
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Notes
- 1.
In an informal conversation in Chit’s house in Mae Tum III on April 2, 2013, Charan shared how his corn plantation landed him annually in deeper debt, beginning with 1000 Baht in the 1st year, 2000 Baht in the 2nd year and 3000 Baht in the 3rd year. He mentioned to Dr. Sunthorn Wongjomporn the next day after the night’s video documentary that the personal testimony of a Thai couple who engaged in rotational farming has reinforced his decision to return to the more sustainable traditional farming.
- 2.
Based on the conversation with Ponchai on April 24, 2013, Maelid village.
- 3.
For details, see “Esoteric Language,” in Lawrence E. Sullivan, ed., The Incanchus’ Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religion (London and New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers & Macmillan Publishing Company), 435–440.
- 4.
The Great Spirit is known to the Inuit of the Artic of Northern Canada. Every Inuit shaman known as angakog has to personally encounter the Great Spirit. A case in point is the shaman whose name is Aua. He mentioned how his mentor Perqanaog exhorted him to think only of the Great Spirit in his time of silence and solitude. During this time, he met his helping spirit who came to him in the shape of a woman. See Roger Walsh, The World Of Shamanism: New Views of an Ancient Tradition (Woodsbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2007).
- 5.
In the article entitled, “World Suffering a sustainability crisis?,” Bangkok Post, April 26, 2012, 10, Jeffery Sachs adds, “economic development rapidly needs to become sustainable, by adopting technologies and lifestyles that reduce the dangerous pressures on the earth’s ecosystem.” In another article “Making Sense of the Global Impasse,” Sachs remarks, “nature doesn’t care about our political machinations. And nature is telling us that our current economic model is dangerous and self-defeating. Unless we find some real global leadership in the next few years, we will learn that lesson in the hardest ways possible.” See http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sach168/English; accessed on May 23, 2011.
- 6.
In November 12, 2000, a joint appeal to the religious and scientific communities for environmental action on behalf of humankind was signed by 32 Nobel laureate and other scientists who pleaded their cause in a petition addressed to the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary leaders Conference in Moscow, Russia. A total of 271 well-known spiritual leaders from 83 countries attended the conference. The joint appeal called for a religious solution to the current ecological crises. They believe that the “environmental crisis requires radical changes not only in public policy, but also in individual behavior”(Moore 2010, 25). They concluded that “there is a vital role for both religion and science” (Ibid.). The spiritual leaders include 51 patriarchs, lamas, chief rabbis, cardinals, mullahs, archbishops, and 55 professors of theology, seminary presidents, deans of cathedrals, heads of religious orders worldwide, 37 heads of national and international religious bodies, some of whom are Ellie Wiesel, Nobel laureate, His Holiness Dalai Lama of Tibet, Joseph Bernadine, Archbishop of Chicago. For more details, see “Preserving and Cherishing the Earth: An Appeal for Joint Committee in Science and Religion” (http://earthrenewal.org/Open_letter_to_the-religious_htm; accessed on November 10, 2010); also see John J. Moore, SJ, “Caritas in Veritate: An Ecological Perspective,” JCTR Bulletin, 85 (2010), 23–26.
- 7.
In 1990, a group of well-known scientists like Carl Sagan, Hans Bethe, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould issued an open letter to the religious community in which they admitted that
We are now threatened by self-inflicted, swiftly moving environmental alterations about whose long-term biological and ecological consequences we are still painfully ignorant: depletion of the protective ozone layer; a global warming unprecedented in the last 150 millennia; the obliteration of an acre of forest every second; the rapid-fire extinction of species; and the prospect of a global nuclear war which would put at risk most of the population of the Earth. There may well be other such dangers of which we are still unaware. Individually and cumulatively, they represent a trap being set for the human species, a trap we are setting for ourselves.
(See http://www.earthrenewal.org/Open_letter_to_the_religious_.htm; accessed on December 29, 2012).
- 8.
Rayappa A. Kasi, “Anthropology versus cosmology: A Schism in Cosmogenesis,” Journal of Dharma, 37, 2 (2012), 169–190.
- 9.
Commenting on anthropocentricism, O’Murchu (2012, 21) argues that “we are beyond the human as conventionally understood. I don’t wish to suggest that we are in the realm of the divine, but we are certainly into esoteric and mystical spheres, probably engaging sublimal and archetypical truths of the rational mind on its own is never likely to comprehend.” See his book, In The Beginning Was The Spirit: Science, Religion and Indigenous Spirituality (New York: Orbis Books, 2012).
- 10.
See Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care For Our Common Home, http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf, accessed on June 18, 2015; also see Paul Ricoeur, Philosophie de la volonté, t. II: Finitude et culpabilité, Paris, 2009, 216.
- 11.
See Mark Hathaway and Leonardo Boff, The Tao of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 316.
- 12.
See Voices, the theological Journal of EATWOT, an Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, New Series, 35, 3–4 (July–December 2012), 21–22.
- 13.
See Frank X. Tuoti, The Dream of the Mystical Age: An Invitation to Enlightenment (New York: The Crossroad Publication Co., 1997), 3.
- 14.
In the same vein, Kathleen Coyle remarks (2013, 202),
Rahner continues to remind us that Christianity must recover its mystical tradition; otherwise, it has nothing to offer the world. To recover our mystical tradition, we need to be more conscious of the Trinitarian life, the core of our graced life which we share. He reminds us that religion without mystical depth is no religion at all.
See her article, “Theology and the New Cosmology: A Quantum Leap in Theological and Spiritual Insight,” EAPR, 50, 2 (2013), 189–205.
- 15.
Lorrenzo Carraro, “Mystic Fire,” World Mission XXIV (February 2012), 36.
- 16.
See Diarmuid O’Murchu, In the Beginning Was the Spirit: Science, Religion, and Indigenous Spirituality (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012).
- 17.
The full text of what Bourdieu et al. (1993, 614) states in his postscript warrants a full citation,
Thus, at the risk of shocking both the rigorous methodologists and the inspired hermeneutic scholar, I would say that interview can be considered a sort of spiritual exercise that, through forgetfulness of self, aims at a true conversion of the way we look at other people in the ordinary circumstances of life. The welcoming disposition, which leads one to make the respondent’s problems one’s own, the capacity to take that person and understand them just as they are in their distinctive necessity, is a sort of intellectual love: a gaze that consents to necessity in the manner of the “intellectual love of God,” that is, of the natural order, which Spinoza held to be the supreme form of knowledge.
See Pierre Bourdieu, “Postscript,” in Pierre Bourdieu et al., eds., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 627–629.
- 18.
Bourdieu believes in the importance of interviews and human intervention as he argues,
contrary to appearances, the observation is not cause for despair: what the social world has done, it can, armed with this knowledge, undo. In any event, what is certain is that nothing is less innocent than noninterference. If it is true that it is not easy to eliminate or even modify most the economic and social factors behind the worst suffering, particularly the mechanisms regulating the labor and educational markets, it is also true that any political program that fails to take full advantage of the possibilities for action (minimal though they may be) that science can help uncover, can be considered guilty of nonassistance to a person in danger.
See Pierre Bourdieu, “Postscript,” 629.
- 19.
See Smith, J.A., Flower, P., and Larkin, M., Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research (London: Sage Publications, 2009).
- 20.
See Sue Jennings, Ritual and Transformation (London and New York: Routledge), 191.
- 21.
See Chapter 2 of the “Report of the World Commission on Environment” and “Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future,” United Nations General Assembly (March 20, 1987). This second chapter is entitled “Towards Sustainable Development,” Paragraph 1, “United Nations General Assembly”; see http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm; accessed on November 21, 2012.
- 22.
“Towards Sustainable Development,” no. 81. The UN calls for a pursuit of sustainable development that requires (1) a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making, (2) an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis, (3) a social system that provides solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development, (4) a production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for basis, (5) a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions, (6) an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance and (7) an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction. Also see the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly, held on September 11, 2012, which adopted Resolution 66/288 (UN A/RES/66/288) of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, entitled The Future We Want, no. 4 which
reaffirms the need to achieve sustainable development by promoting sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth, creating greater opportunities for all, reducing inequalities, raising basic standards of living, fostering equitable social development and inclusion, and promoting the integrated and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems that supports, inter alia, economic, social and human development while facilitating ecosystem conservation, regeneration and restoration and resilience in the face of new and emerging challenges.
(See http://conspect.nl/pdf/Our_Common_Future_Brundtland_Report_1987.pdf; accessed on December 2, 2012)
- 23.
The document The Future We Want in no. 4 states, “We recognize that poverty eradication, changing unsustainable and promoting sustainable patterns of consumption and production and protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development are the overarching objectives of and essential requirements for sustainable development.” See http://conspect.nl/pdf/Our_Common_Future_Brundtland_Report_1987.pdf; accessed on December 2, 2012.
- 24.
In no. 4 of The Future We Want, the reference is made under section III, entitled “Green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty Eradication.” In the same document, in no. 58, states that the green economy policies in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication should recognize the relevant contribution of traditional cultures and knowledge. See http://conspect.nl/pdf/Our_Common_Future_Brundtland_Report_1987.pdf; accessed on December 2, 2012.
- 25.
No. 31 of The Future We Want states,
We emphasize that sustainable development must be inclusive and people centered, benefiting and involving all people, including youth and children. We recognize that gender equality and women’s empowerment are important for sustainable development and our common future. We reaffirm our commitments to ensure women’s equal rights, access and opportunities for participation and leadership in the economy, society and political decision-making.
Also see no. 64: “We acknowledge that involvement of all stakeholders and their partnerships, networking and experience-sharing at all levels could help countries to learn from one another in identifying appropriate sustainable development policies, including green economy policies.” See http://conspect.nl/pdf/Our-Common_Future_Brundtland_Report_1987.pdf; accessed on December 2, 2012.
- 26.
Rayappa A. Kasi, “Anthropology versus Cosmology: A Schism in Cosmogenesis,” Journal of Dharma, 37, 2 (2012), 171.
- 27.
Ibid., 169–190.
- 28.
Ibid., 176.
- 29.
Mathew Chandrankunnel, C.M.I., “In Support of a Sustainable Green Earth: A Paradigm Shift from Homo Faber towards Homo Custos,” Journal of Dharma, 37, 2 (2012), 146.
- 30.
Ibid., 129–146.
- 31.
Ibid., 146.
- 32.
For more detail, see http://cupuladospovos.org.br/en/2012/06/indigenous-peoples-international-declaration-on-self-determination-and-sustainable-development/; accessed on November 19, 2012.
- 33.
See the Rio+20 Declaration of The International Conference of Indigenous Peoples on Self-Determination and Sustainable Development http://www.iwgia.org/news/search-news_id=542; accessed on November 12, 2013.
- 34.
David R. Loy, “Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes? A Buddhist Perspective on Greed and Globalization,” in Paul Knitter and Chandra Muzaffar, eds., Subverting Greed: Religious Perspectives on the Global Economy (New York: Orbis Books, 2002), 72–73.
- 35.
Ameer Ali, “Globalization and Greed: A Muslim Perspective,” in Paul Knitter and Chandra Muzaffar, eds., Subverting Greed: Religious Perspectives on the Global Economy (New York: Orbis Books, 2002), 33; Steven C. Hackett, Environmental and Natural Resources Economics: Theory, Policy and the Sustainable Society (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 33.
- 36.
Sallie McFague, “God’s Household: Christianity, Economics, and Planetary Living,” in Paul Knitter and Chandra Muzaffar, eds., Subverting Greed: Religious Perspectives on the Global Economy (New York: Orbis Books, 2002), 126.
- 37.
In the same vein, Polanyi argued that to “allow the market mechanism to be sole director of human beings and their natural environment…would result in the demolition of society,” civilization, and Mother Earth altogether.” See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 73.
- 38.
It is interesting to note that the priests or movuo (royal priesthood), the elders or Kotsiimei (leading/shepherding priesthood) and the designated men or Khehremei (prophetic priesthood) of the Mao Naga Tribe of Northeast India address their prayers to the supreme God of is known both as the “Mother of the steep land/mountain” (oji masi pfii) and “Father of the blue sky” (Orachii madie pfo) and the first Ancestress (Opei) and the first Ancestor (Ope). See Linus Neli, “Priesthood and Spirituality in Mao Naga Culture,” Encounter: A Journal for Contextual Theology, 1 (2010), 120.
- 39.
For more details, see Anthony R. Walker, Merit and Millennium: Routine and Crisis in the Ritual Lives of the Lahu People (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Cooperation, 2003), 621.
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Fung, J.M. (2017). The Ensuing Challenges and Critiques. In: A Shamanic Pneumatology in a Mystical Age of Sacred Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51022-4_5
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