Strategic Provincialization
Over twenty years ago, Bron Taylor invited me to join the editorial team of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Like other authors in this little series of blog posts, I was drawn into the preparations for founding the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture in 2006 by the vastly interdisciplinary ERN project (see Bron Taylor’s account of these developments on this blog). From the beginning, “international” was both programmatic and challenging. Although we successfully attracted scholars from various disciplines, as well as activists and practitioners from all walks of life, most of the members were based in the US. I was one of the few active European members (and have remained the only president from outside of the US to date).
When I began my term as president of the ISSRNC in 2009, I felt a commitment to seriously internationalize the society. An excellent opportunity to do so arose when Sylvie Shaw and Yamini Narayanan proposed holding the next ISSRNC conference in Perth, Australia. Thanks to Yamini Narayanan’s extraordinary effort and competence, this conference turned out to be a huge success. With contributions from Richard Wallay, Freya Mathews, Clive Hamilton, Mary Zeiss Stange, Jan Boersema, and others, the “Living on the Edge” conference was a true celebration of international engagement with religion and nature. With so many new members joining the society, we even attempted to establish an Australian or East Asian chapter of the ISSRNC.
For many reasons, it turned out to be much more difficult than expected to seriously internationalize our society. Looking back at the Perth conference and subsequent attempts by the ISSRNC to draw people from other parts of the world to the society, I realize that more is at stake than administrative, legal, or pragmatic reasons. We are confronted with a deeply engrained colonial order that structurally impedes our ability to actively engage with people and knowledge that hegemonic regimes of exploitation tend to overlook. Even within organizations like the ISSRNC, which clearly attempts to overcome colonialism, injustice, and exploitation, the hegemonic structures resist necessary change.
With reference to environmental justice, this mechanism has been observed by many critics coming from outside of the colonial ‘West,’ pointing out that the standard narrative of the European and American environmental movement tends to overlook how present such issues were outside this hegemonic space. For instance, consider Mahatma Gandhi’s environmental ethics and its legacy, as well as the many forms of Indigenous resistance to the colonial exploitation of agential landscapes. The “environmentalism of the poor,” associated with the Global South and less over-industrialized countries outside of the North Atlantic worlds, is gaining wider recognition. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley describe this as “a remarkable turn in which ecocritical methodologies have been adapted for rethinking postcolonial literature as well as a recognition on the part of mainstream American ecocritics of the need to engage in more globally nuanced terms” (p. 9).
If we take this decolonial claim seriously, we will not stop at the inclusion of underrepresented human perspectives. The critique of anthropocentrism and speciesism, and the subsequent extension of the moral community beyond the human, necessarily also includes the more-than-human worlds as agential members of our knowledge society. This is the background of ‘multi-species research’ in anthropology and adjacent fields that has emerged over the last couple of years. “Multispecies ethnographers are studying the host of organisms whose lives and deaths are linked to human social worlds,” S. Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich explain. With reference to Donna Haraway and the philosophical discussion of entangled ecologies of agency, the concept of ‘becoming (with)’ gains new traction here, with “new kinds of relations emerging from nonhierarchical alliances, symbiotic attachments, and the mingling of creative agents” (p. 545–546).
The attempt at internationalization and the extension of moral communities beyond humans have one thing in common: fighting against structures of injustice and exploitation. Academic societies can play an important role in this endeavor. They are manifestations of the exploitative structures that they aim to overcome, particularly in the North Atlantic world. This gives them a special responsibility to critically reflect on their place within these structures. On the other hand, at times they resonate with the global transformations of knowledge and being happening today, and they can be vehicles of change.
For twenty years, the ISSRNC has been a pioneer in exploring new perspectives on the relationship between spirituality and more-than-human environments. Its members have advocated for change in many ways. I am grateful for the deep friendships I have found in this community over the years, as well as for the intellectual inspiration I have received, which has influenced my work in many ways, as is clearly visible in my new book. As we celebrate the society’s twentieth anniversary, I hope we continue to subvert hegemonic systems of power, establish international communities on a global scale, and incorporate the more-than-human as active members of the ISSRNC’s working groups and leadership.
Perhaps it is time to create new positions on the society’s board, such as at-large members and representatives from countries outside the hegemonic North Atlantic region and from the more-than-human world. As for more-than-human representatives, I’ve learned a lot from working with the Embassy of the North Sea. This coming weekend, from September 3 to 6, 2026, we will gather with over 50 rivers, lakes, lagoons, glaciers, seas, and wetlands at the Confluence of European Water Bodies in Berlin.
If we are members of the privileged human milieus, it’s time to provincialize ourselves.
This blog post is the seventh in a series about the history of the ISSRNC. In preparation for the ISSRNC’s 20th-anniversary conference in Venice in October 2026, all of the association’s former presidents will share their experiences and insights.
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Kocku von Stuckrad is one of the co-founders and co-directors of Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge. As a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), he works on the history of religion, science, and philosophy in Europe and North America. His new book, After Exploitation: How We Can Build Flourishing Relationships with the Earth, will be out with Equinox Press in September 2026 (the German version, Nach der Ausbeutung: Wie unser Verhältnis zur Erde gelingen kann, was published with Europa Verlag in 2024).
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Image credits: © Embassy of the North Sea / Mar Menor, 2025. Used with permission.
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