This article develops a reciprocity ethics of the environment through a discussion of ethnobotanical medicines used in the treatment of cancer. The moral virtue of reciprocity, defined as the returning of good when good is received or anticipated, is central to the posthumanist rethinking of human relationships to the plant world. As herbal medicines are used progressively more around the globe and as plant diversity decreases as a result of habitat loss and climate change, an ethics of reciprocity should be a concern for environmental philosophers and conservationists. Aldo Leopold's land ethic and J. Baird Callicott's distinction between deontological and prudential environmental ethics provide theoretical contexts for the development of a reciprocity ethics vis-à-vis ethnobotanical species. While this article does not necessarily specify modes or forms of reciprocity, it does outline some of the more prominent ethnobotanical species used in the treatment of cancer, including those from Native American, African, Chinese, and Indian traditions. In the form of a dialogue between the fields of ethnobotany, herbal medicine, and environmental philosophy, this article presents a position from which further articulations of reciprocity can be developed, particularly those involving the rights of indigenous cultures and plants.

Phai thu nhan cai nhin tong quan ma toi dua ra o day chi la mot trong so rat nhieu dieu co the viet ra. No duoc thuat lai chu yeu dua tren mot cuon sach vua duoc xuat ban gan day la Phe binh sinh thai Dong Nam A, do nha xuat ban Lexington phat hanh. Cuon sach nay, thuc chat, la mot each tiep can co y chung cat Dong Nam A thanh mot hinh thai chung co the thong hieu duoc qua viec quan sat nhung duong bien chinh tri cua no, ma mot vai trong so nhung duong bien ay da duoc tao thanh tu thoi thuc dan, trong khi mot vai trong so do lai tuong ung voi nhung duong bien tu nhien cua nhung dong song, nhung vung bien, nhung day nui doi; va tat ca chung lai cung tao thanh nhung duong phan ranh gioi cac khu vuc van hoa, ngon ngu va sinh thai khac nhau. Chang han, trong cuon Nghien cuu Dong Nam A xuat ban lan dau tien nam 1971, hai nha su hoc David Chandler va William Roff cung voi nhung cong su cua ho da luu y rang, thuat ngu Dong Nam A chi bat dau duoc su dung pho bien nhu la mot dinh danh dia ly sau cuoc chien tranh Viet Nam nhung nam 60-70 the ki XX.

This paper examines the relationship between language, particularly language that expresses aesthetic experiences of plant life, and corporeality. The theorisation of language is a keystone towards conceptualising participatory relationships between people and the botanical world. A comparative reading of the works of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Heidegger provides a framework for approaching language as embodied participation. Despite political differences, Thoreau and Heidegger shared a mutual conviction about the generative powers of language. Thoreau's literary practice partly involved immersion in places such as swamps and forests. Fittingly, Heidegger's explication of Rilke's concept of "the Open" mirrors the participatory aesthetics of Thoreau. Both thinkers looked towards the capacities of poetics to galvanise the evolution of language. In response to the increasing dissection offered by contemporaneous theories of linguistics, Thoreau and Heidegger held the notion of language as a body in itself, one brought to life through immanence between sensuous bodies in the world. For each theorist, language was both bodily and a body. Their works evidence that multi-sensorial encounters with the natural world can be captured in language. The body of language may be engaged with as a whole living phenomenon rather than a dissected corpse as this comparative reading of Thoreau and Heidegger will intimate.

Southeast Asian Ecocriticism presents a timely exploration of the rapidly expanding field of ecocriticism through its devotion to the writers, creators, theorists, traditions, concerns, and landscapes of Southeast Asian countries. While ecocritics have begun to turn their attention to East and South Asian contexts and, particularly, to Chinese and Indian cultural productions, less emphasis has been placed on the diverse environmental traditions of Southeast Asia. Building on recent scholarship in Asian ecocriticism, the book gives prominence to the range of theoretical models and practical approaches employed by scholars based within, and located outside of, the Southeast region. Consisting of twelve chapters, Southeast Asian Ecocriticism includes contributions on the ecological prose, poetry, cinema, and music of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The authors emphasize the transnational exchanges of materials, technologies, texts, motifs, and ideas between Southeast Asian countries and Australia, England, Taiwan (Formosa), and the United States. From environmental hermeneutics, postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, and ecofeminism to critical plant studies, ecopoetics, and ecopedagogy, the edited collection embodies the dynamic breadth of interdisciplinary environmental scholarship today. Southeast Asian Ecocriticism foregrounds the theories, practices, and prospects of ecocriticism in the region. The volume opens up new directions and reveals fresh possibilities not only for ecocritical scholarship in Southeast Asia but for a comparative environmental criticism that transcends political boundaries and national canons. The volume highlights the important role of literature in heightening awareness of ecological issues at local, regional, and global scales.

FloraCultures is a 2013 pilot project in development with Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth, Western Australia, and funded by Edith Cowan University's Early Career Researcher grant scheme. The project aims to develop a model for documenting the plant-based cultural heritage of 30-50 indigenous species occurring in the Kings Park bushland (Figure 1). The FloraCultures initiative (www.FloraCultures.org.au) integrates archival and digital design techniques, creating a unique web portal of potential interest to a range of users- from first-time tourists and amateur naturalists to heritage consultants and environmental conservationists (Figure 2). The initiative reflects the belief that research into environmental heritage (defined broadly to encompass natural and cultural heritage and tangible and intangible theory) is integral to the conservation of flora and fauna in their ecological habitats. The project stresses that the appreciation of biodiversity for its cultural significance helps to sustain broader conservation values.

This review of publications in the field of ecocriticism in 2017 is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Anthropocene Ecocriticism; 3. Material Ecocriticism; 4. Cognitive and Affective Ecocriticism; 5. Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities; 6. Conclusion. The review focuses on three single-authored monographs, three edited collections, one stand-alone book chapter and two journal issues. Environmental urgencies related to climate change continue to provide the pressing context for ecocritical scholarship. Publications in the field consider a range of texts with bearing on public awareness of global ecological concerns. This year’s work reveals sustained engagement with developments in the Anthropocene debate, as evident in scholars’ particular interest in deep temporality and risk theory. The review identifies narrative heterogenization as a distinct feature of many studies. Ecocritical focus on a plurality of narratives (novels, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, documentary films, feature films, digital media, games, artistic artefacts, and anti-ecological texts) underscores the significance of the environmental humanities as the field’s transdisciplinary milieu. Moreover, salient conjunctions between ecocriticism and critical studies of ecomedia, animals, and plants signify the continuing diversification of the field beyond its anglophonic origins in British and North American nature writing. In addition to a prevailing focus on the Anthropocene and new materialism, ecocritical work this year intersects with cognitive and affective theory, offering potential for further analysis of the role of science, perception, emotion, and embodiment in environmental narratives.

The ancient aesthetics of 'yijing' has played a crucial role in traditional Chinese philosophy, literature and art since the eighth century CE. Defined variously by early and contemporary writers, 'yijing' links an artist's emotional domain to objects in the world. This article conceptualises 'yijing' as an ecological aesthetics and distinguishes it from an environmental aesthetics. In particular, two aspects of 'yijing' render it an eco-aesthetics: subject-object correspondence (or 'engagement'); and empathic identification with the environment (or 'bio-empathy'). Three brief case studies from urban planning, environmental conservation and the creative arts demonstrate the contemporary importance of 'yijing' to ecological issues.

This paper presents the conceptual challenges to an aesthetic model of living plants based in embodied interaction with flora through smell, taste, touch, sound and sight. I argue that the science of aesthetics is deterministically visual. Drawing from theories of landscape aesthetics put forth by Carlson and Berleant, I outline four primary obstacles to an embodied aesthetics: plants as objects of sight, plants as objects of art, plants as objects of disinterestedness and plants as objects of scientific discourse. A multi-sensorial aesthetics of flora requires auto-centric proximity and degrees of intersubjectivity between the appreciator and the appreciated plant that raise important philosophical questions about aesthetic experience of the natural world.

Over the last 30 years, environmental philosophers and ecological researchers have turned their attention to the possibilities of narratives: the stories people tell about their lives in conjunction with the human and non-human agents they live with. An interest in narrative environmental ethics reflects a re-evaluation of canonical ecophilosophical texts. Works such as Paul W. Taylor's 'Respect for Nature' suggest an essentialist view of environmental ethics in which predetermined principles are imposed on places and situations. On the other hand, Aldo Leopold's 'A Sand County Almanac' combines first-person prose with science-based explanations of the "biotic pyramid" towards the development of a land ethic. Examples, such as Leopold's, of narrative ethics are thought to offer relational, place-based, non-authoritative, and non-anthropocentric models. This article examines three critical components of environmental narratives: self, context, and tradition. In order for environmental narratives to advance ecological ethics, they must be accompanied by the tradition of natural science (geology, ecology, and evolution) to provide the 'sponsoring ground' for ethical concern and action. The role of natural science as a tradition-and indeed one of many-in narrative ethics provides the basis for ecological selfhood in the context of place. These assertions will be supported by an analysis of the environmental narratives of Karen Warren and Jim Cheney. However, in the temporally expansive and ecologically conscious poetic narratives of John Kinsella we find an environmental ethics deeply rooted in the material realities of place.

This chapter proposes the idea of literary ethnobotany as both a conceptual framework for reading classical Burmese poetry and as a subgenre of the nature poetry tradition of the "Golden Age" of Burmese literature prior to British colonisation. In general, works of literary ethnobotany narrate aspects of human interactions with and uses of plants as food, fiber, medicine, decoration, enjoyment, pleasure and spiritual investment. This chapter briefly traces the origin of literary ethnobotany back to the late fifteenth-century tawla tradition of the forest journey in Burma. Subsequent poets, such as UK yaw, invoked the tawla in the nineteenth century in poems that express the beauty and multisensoriality of the botanical world as well as traditional uses of flora by villagers for subsistence purposes. In Burma and the Southeast Asian region today, literary ethnobotany has the potential to serve as a vital means to preserve rapidly disappearing traditional understandings of plants.