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Water Powers: Sacred Aquatic Animals of the Asia-Pacific

Water Powers: Sacred Aquatic Animals of the Asia-Pacific

Hardcover

Comparative ReligionAnthropologyGeneral Asian History

ISBN13: 9798880702084
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: Apr 30 2026
Pages: 346
Weight: 1.55
Height: 1.11 Width: 6.11 Depth: 9.11
Language: English

Water Powers is an interdisciplinary collection that presents timely, original research on sacred aquatic animals--from dragons and nagas to crocodiles, eels, dugongs, and whales--and environmental change. Contributors examine the past and present significance of these creatures in Nepal, India, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan, Okinawa, Indonesia, and Aotearoa-New Zealand to explore the diverse relationships between animals, deities, humans, and bodies of water. In so doing, they challenge narratives about disenchantment as a core aspect of modernization, seeking to give the sacred creatures and the rituals associated with them a more central place in debates about environmental degradation and conservation initiatives. Their work converges around three core themes: (1) divine embodiment and materiality (how sacred beings manifest themselves and act in the world); (2) making and crossing boundaries (how aquatic animals are constrained by but also challenge physical, ontological, and conceptual boundaries); and (3) crises and relationality (how more-than-human relationships change in response to environmental and other crises).

Also from

Rots, Aike P.

Also in

General Asian History