Enlightenment and the Gasping City: Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Disarray

Title: Enlightenment and the Gasping City: Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Disarray
Author: Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko
D: 1726167
ISBN: 9781501737640
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2019
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 252
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description:

With air pollution now intimately affecting every resident of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko seeks to understand how, as a physical constant throughout the winter months, the murky and obscuring nature of air pollution has become an active part of Mongolian religious and ritual life. Enlightenment and the Gasping City identifies air pollution as a boundary between the physical and the immaterial, showing how air pollution impresses itself on the urban environment as stagnation and blur. She explores how air pollution and related phenomena exist in dynamic tension with Buddhist ideas and practices concerning purification, revitalisation and enlightenment. By focusing on light, its intersections and its oppositions, she illuminates Buddhist practices and beliefs as they interact with the pressing urban issues of air pollution, post-socialist economic vacillations, urban development, nationalism, and climate change.