Sacred forest groves in the Western Ghats of India are small fragments of tropical forest that have received protection due to religious beliefs and cultural practices. These forest fragments are an example of community-based conservation and they serve as refugia for many forest-dwelling species in otherwise highly anthropogenic tropical forest-agriculture landscapes of the Indian Western Ghat...

Duran Bell and Cynthia Werner From the earliest days of the field, economic anthropologists have observed that material objects often are imbued with sacred qualities whose values can never be reduced to material necessity or monetary equivalent. In 2002, the Society for Economic Anthropology hosted a conference to reconsider these ideas in the world today. We invited Professor Maurice Godelier...

Sacred values, such as those associated with religious or ethnic identity, underlie many important individual and group decisions in life, and individuals typically resist attempts to trade off their sacred values in exchange for material benefits. Deontological theory suggests that sacred values are processed based on rights and wrongs irrespective of outcomes, while utilitarian theory suggest...

This paper examines the development of sacred structures in rural Czechia (former Czechoslovakia). Sacred structures could be associated with the creation of important symbols and distinctive rural regional identities in Czechia. Rural Czechia is not uniform: it represents several different rural landscapes. This paper considers whether sacred structures support the idea of multiple and fundame...

In this article I provide an overview of the identity, role and function of sacred texts in Hinduism. Hinduism’s tremendous diversity extends to the numerous ways in which different types of texts have been identified as sacred and used by Hindu practitioners. It would be a mistake to attempt to summarise the role of sacred texts in the lives of Hindus, since different texts have had different ...

A space can be sacred, providing those who inhabit a particular space with sense of transcendence-being connected to something greater than oneself. The sacredness may be inherent in the space, as for a religious institution or a serene place outdoors. Alternatively, a space may be made sacred by the people within it and events that occur there. As medical providers, we have the opportunity to ...

The article deals with the sacred groves of the Balts in Lithuania and presents the linguistic background, the historical documents from the 12th– 18th century, the key folklore motifs of the topic, as well as selected examples of groves. The article also discusses possible relationships between pre-Christian religious traditions connected with the sacred groves and the ones which have survived...

Local belief systems such as indigenous religions and social taboos have been credited with helping to conserve animal and plant species and particular sites worldwide. Certain species and sites are protected because they are considered sacred. Although the meaning of sacred varies across cultures, religions, and languages, in general sacred entities are distinguished from the everyday world an...

Conflicts over sacred values may be particularly difficult to resolve. Because sacred values are nonfungible with material values, standard attempts to negotiate, such as offering material incentives to compromise, often backfire, increasing moral outrage and support for violent action. We present studies with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza demonstrating three other ways sacred values m...

Tree worship is very common worldwide. This field study surveys the ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees in present-day Israel; it includes the results of interviews with 98 informants in thirty-one Arab, Bedouin, and Druze villages in the Galilee. The main results are: 1. Sacred trees were treated as another kind of sacred entity with all their metaphysical as well as physical manife...