Whales of Power addresses theoretical and methodological problems in two academic fields: Asian area studies and religious studies. It has three corresponding objectives.
First, Whales of Power applies recent theoretical developments associated with the environmental humanities to the study of religion, bridging the gap between the two fields. It does so in two ways. First, WhoP contributes to overcoming anthropocentrism in religious studies by introducing multispecies theory to the field, taking non-human animals seriously not only as passive objects of veneration or human-made symbols, but as historical actors. Second, it challenges the “religion and ecology” subfield by arguing that we should move beyond the utilitarian question of how religions can contribute to “solving” the environmental crisis, instead looking at rituals as creative means to mediate and reshape human-nature relations and cope with ecological grief.
The second objective of Whales of Power is to reconsider the role of “local” worship practices in the Asian Secular Age, examining the changing meanings attributed to such practices today. This entails the question of how so-called “folk belief” and “popular religion” – those practices not or not fully subsumed under the institutional and ideological banner of “World Religions” such as Buddhism and Christianity – are acquiring new meanings as types of “secular sacred” intangible cultural heritage, often reconfigured as “national” traditions, throughout East and Southeast Asia. This “heritagisation of religion” is not a uniquely Asian phenomenon, but can also be observed in the West. Drawing on Asian case studies and insights, Whales of Power develops new theory on the formation of heritage and its impact on religious institutions and practices.
Finally, the third objective of Whales of Power is to challenge the persistent methodological nationalism in East Asian (especially Japanese and Chinese) Studies and contribute to a new comparative paradigm. Instead of taking nations for granted as natural categories, it studies processes of nation-building on the ground, examining how and why “local” and “indigenous” practices are reconfigured as “national” traditions. Whales of Power focuses on intra-Asian and intra-Pacific comparisons rather than classical East-West binary oppositions. Such a paradigm shift strengthens the study of Asian epistemologies not only as comparative Others that are useful for verifying or falsifying Western theories, but as fertile sites for the production of new, non-Eurocentric theories that can benefit other social science and humanities disciplines.
In the final reporting period (from July 2023 until January 2025), the PI and other Whales of Power team members have addressed the three overarching objectives through a combination of academic publications, teaching, and outreach activities. The first objective – building new bridges between the environmental humanities, the study of religion, and adjacent disciplines – has been a key concern not only of PI Rots but also of Durney, Palz, Åman, and Lu Rots, all of whom work within the field of environmental humanities. It is the main focus of several key project publications and has been central to public outreach. Second: studying transformations in local worship traditions in relation to heritage-making has been one of the main concerns of Rots, Nguyen, Haugan, and Durney, and is central to some of their publications. Third, through invited lectures, publications, and teaching practices, Rots has actively addressed the persistent problem of methodological nationalism within Japanese studies and offered an alternative approach that acknowledges both diversity within the country (including Indigenous perspectives) and commonalities across the wider East and Southeast Asian region. In sum, all three objectives have been achieved.
