Cosmological Visionaries
The Nuosu (ꆈꌠ) are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic minority group living in Southwest China. They are animists, attributing agency and a sense of personhood to living things in nature, the spirit world and objects with spiritual significance, alongside humans. This research project explores how the widespread introduction of renewable energy technologies such as solar panels and wind turbines in Southwest China is shaping Nuosu ways of life.
Many people are unsettled by the introduction of these technologies, fearing they are disturbing local mountain spirits (musi ꃅꌋ). However, views among the Nuosu are changing to integrate their animistic visions to sit alongside efforts to create a sustainable future.
Nuosu experiences of the climate transition reveal how important relationships to the natural world are to the ways we situate ourselves in relation to our society’s past, present and future. They also show how important these relationships are to the new worlds we want to create.
This project includes interactive content on touchscreens, presenting 3D digital models of ritual objects used in bimo ceremonies. Bimo (ꀘꂾ) are Nuosu religious specialists who, like priests, are often called upon to hold rituals ranging from major ceremonies such as funerals and post-mortuary nimu cobi (ꆀꃅꊾꀘ) rituals to exorcisms that expel ghosts who bring illnesses and other troubles to the home.
BSL interpretation for this artwork is available via this link
Katherine Swancutt (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities) is a social anthropologist at King’s College London with a longstanding interest in the anthropology of religion. She is the Project Lead of the ERC synergy grant ‘Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia’ from 2020-2026. Katherine joined King’s in 2013 and founded the Religious and Ethnic Diversity in China and Asia Research Unit (REDCARU) at King’s in 2016, of which she is the Director. She has since established additional network branches for REDCARU at Yunnan Normal University and Yunnan Minzu University in Kunming, China.
Jan Karlach (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities) is a researcher with an academic background in Sinology and Sociology. As part of the Cosmological Visionaries team, Jan investigates the impact of Chinese economic development on the Nuosu-Yi cosmology. He collaborates with Nuosu-Yi literati-ritualists and shamans to understand how modernization projects like satellites, railroads, and power plants are integrated into their animistic beliefs. Jan’s work sheds light on the dynamic relationship between traditional cultures and contemporary development.
Zuoxi Yueqi (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities) is a PhD Student in Social Anthropology and a member of the Cosmological Visionaries project. Zuoxi’s work brings the Nuosu response to climate change into conversation with ancient Nuosu-Yi books on cosmology, the world, time, humans, and other beings. She is particularly interested in uncovering the connections between the ritual logics of Nuosu forestry protection, their classification and use of plants, their ritual ‘violence’ towards animals, and the ways that wind and solar power stations are shaping the environment in Liangshan today.
Find out more about the Cosmological Visionaries project here.
The Cosmological Visionaries project is funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 856543)