September 7, 2013
By: James Miller
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] Students from Fudan University and Queen's University at their first orientation session[/caption] Below us the text of a speech I gave at the orientation day for the Queen's-Fudan semester in Shanghai program. Thank you for inviting...
Read the full post »
August 16, 2013
By: James Miller
In June this year Ian Johnson published a major report in the New York Times on China's plans to urbanize 250 million citizens over the next decade or so. This drive continues the decades-long story of China's conversion from an...
Read the full post »
July 9, 2013
By: James Miller
At the end of June I had the privilege of speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. The topic for the week was the film Journey of the Universe, by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker. If you...
Read the full post »
May 25, 2013
By: James Miller
[caption id="attachment_646" align="alignright" width="300"] A view over the Forbidden City in Beijing[/caption] In a recent column in Nature, Qiang Wang argues that responsibility for transforming China's environment lies with its citizens. He points to several instances in which local protests...
Read the full post »
June 26, 2012
By: James Miller
In an online report on Religious Innovation for Sustainable Future (no longer available), Nina Witoszek (Oslo University) surveys a "pastoral renaissance" taking place across the globe. [caption id="attachment_619" align="alignright" width="300"] Image from www.ceres21.org[/caption] This renaissance, she declares, is "not just...
Read the full post »
June 7, 2012
By: James Miller
A recent news story on Reuters, headlined Thou Shalt Not Launch IPOs, China tells temples, reports that the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) has issued an injunction against temples listing on the stock exchange. SARA official Liu Wei is...
Read the full post »
March 26, 2012
By: James Miller
A conservation biologist by training, I first arrived in Xishuangbanna because of my interest in the ecological value of sacred groves called “holy hills,” fragments of old-growth rainforest that remain protected by indigenous Dai people despite rapid deforestation due to...
Read the full post »
March 1, 2012
By: James Miller
For the past six months I've been working with Dan Smyer Yu from the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity on a conference which is finally taking place next week at Minzu University in Beijing. The title of...
Read the full post »
February 12, 2012
By: James Miller
This term I have the privilege of co-teaching a new seminar course at Queen's (with Emily Hill) on the topic of Green China: Environment, Culture, Politics. The course examines the intersections between religion, culture, politics, and the natural environment in China...
Read the full post »
January 7, 2012
By: James Miller
[caption id="attachment_524" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Maoshan Temple"][/caption] In May 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Maoshan, an important Daoist site in Jiangsu province (see here for my earlier post). One result of my fieldwork was that it gave a deeper...
Read the full post »
