Call for Papers—“Handbook of Traditional Spirituality and Sustainability”

Background:

Many of the most biodiverse areas of the planet have remained intact because of the stewardship of traditional cultures living sustainably within them. Indigenous lifestyles commonly rest on values and worldview orientations that are correlated with environmentally sympathetic land-care practices. There is a large body of literature that reflects a relatively harmonious interrelationship between Indigenous knowledge, traditional spirituality, and sustainable subsistence. Indigenous worldview understandings have a crucial role to play in respect of supporting biodiversity conservation, global climate change adaptation, and the UN SDGs. These understandings might be regarded as key to sustainable human futures. Yet Indigenous knowledge and traditional spirituality continue to be widely eclipsed and under-appreciated according to the technocratic values and norms of the modern global economy. Given that Indigenous communities have sustainably subsisted for thousands of years suggests that it is timely to revisit sustainability and ecological conservation from their perspectives. This entails esteeming, inviting, and enlisting their knowledge and worldview understandings to help meet the growing ecological needs of our current era. There is a compelling case to engage more closely with Indigenous knowledge, traditional spirituality, and sustainability to benefit future coping.

Set against this background, this call for papers invites contributions that are attuned to Indigenous, traditional, and local place-based knowledges and spirituality and how these once underpinned sustainable development.

Invitation to contribute:

We invite suitably qualified experts and project teams to contribute to the edited volume Handbook of Traditional Spirituality and Sustainability. We particularly invite contributions and collaborative papers involving scholars and practitioners who represent Indigenous or traditional knowledge-holders. This interdisciplinary book breaks new ground by expressly inviting contributions that focus on the traditional spirituality-sustainability nexus. A unique feature of this book is its explicit theory-practice focus. The appraisal of present and future challenges and opportunities, framed within a context of public policy and praxis, will make this interdisciplinary volume a state-of-the-art reference work that is expected to remain relevant for decades.

Envisaged chapter topics:

Topics include but are not limited to the following themes, the scope of which may overlap:

• Interrelationships between spirituality and sustainable water use
• Research on how worldviews influence environmental attitudes
• Traditional knowledge, spirituality, and genealogy: Looking to the past to learn for the future
• Infusing spirituality in education: Informing, influencing, and inspiring sustainable habits
• Engaging multipolarity, multiculturality, and multiethnicity: Capacitating collaborative approaches
• Learning with, about, and from First Nations Peoples: Nurturing traditional ecological consciousness
• Reciprocal and reverential interrelationships between land, people and biosphere
• Bridging the science-spirituality divide: Creating consilience by linking the sciences and humanities
• Spirituality and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Missing dimension or missed opportunity?
• Holistic sustainability solutions that reach beyond material or technical dimensions
• Others (please consult the editors if you have additional ideas)

Comprising works by scholars and practitioners from around the globe, the Handbook of Traditional Spirituality and Sustainability will be a ground-breaking interdisciplinary volume showcasing state-of-the-art sustainability practices that will contribute to building an emergent field of investigation as characterised in the peer-reviewed literature: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01347-8 ; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.135091 ; https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/06/12/harnessing-traditional-knowledge-for-climate-resilience-in-the-pacific/ ; https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NC3MIEEFFCRSIBDSU3HF/full?target=10.1080/17565529.2024.2305883
Published by Springer Nature, it will draw from the experience and success of the Handbook of Climate Change Management https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57281-5 ; Beyond Belief: Opportunities for Faith-Engaged Approaches to Climate-Change Adaptation in the Pacific Islands https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67602-5 ; and Interfaith Engagement Beyond the Divide https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3862-9

The new Handbook will be published as part of Springer’s World Sustainability Series https://www.springer.com/series/13384 , which is the leading peer-reviewed book series on matters related to sustainable development. Over 3,000 authors from across all geographical regions have contributed to the series to date.

Expressions of interest:
Expressions of interest to contribute to the book, initially consisting of a 200-word abstract, with the title of the work, qualifications, and the full contact details of the authors, should be sent to: jluetz@usc.edu.au Details on the submission and the peer-review process will be shared with those authors whose abstracts are accepted.

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 31 August 2024. Full papers are due by 30 November 2024. The book is expected to be launched in early 2025.

Regards,

The Editorial Team