In this volume, prominent Buddhist scholar Donald Swearer posits that the future requires a radical shift toward living in recognition of the interdependence of all life forms and the consequent ethic of communality and a life style of moderation or “enoughness” that flows from that recognition, which he calls “an ecology of human flourishing.” Swearer has assembled world-class thinkers to explore and imagine several dimensions of an ecology of human flourishing: economic, sociological, religious, ethical, environmental, historical, literary; how notions of human flourishing, quality of life, and common good have been constructed; and, in the contemporary world, how they are illuminated or are challenged by issues of distributive justice, poverty and economic inequality, global health, and environmental sustainability.

With contributors ranging from ecoactivist Bill McKibben and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, to transformative theologian Sallie McFague and Malaysian critic of global injustice Chandra Muzzafar, this book expresses ethical and religious aspirations to remake the world in the midst of the contradictions, injustices, and problems of our daily lives and today's global economic and climate crises.

Because the situation in Iraq exhibits some of the standard symptoms of religious nationalism, it seems appropriate to compare it to other cases where the impulses of religion and nationalism have also come together in a highly lethal way. This volume provides a comparative consideration of attempts to manage and resolve nationalist conflicts in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan, and examines how lessons from those situations might inform similar efforts in Iraq. In their introduction, Professors Little and Swearer review current scholarly thinking on the connection of religious and ethnic factors to nationalist conflicts, and they demonstrate the salience of religious and ethnic identity to these conflicts. For each country, two prominent thinkers examine the intersection of religion and ethnicity and the struggles to form a nation-state. The volume also contains a summary of the discussion on each country among 20 scholars, appendices providing background on the three countries with which Iraq is compared, and maps of the countries. The central role of ethnic and religious impulses in forming the identity of a people or "nation" directly ties these matters to nationalism and nationalist conflict.