Lived religion and gendered environmental governance: ecofeminism and indigenous cosmology in the Kajang community, Indonesia.

This article examines how lived religion, indigenous cosmology, and gendered moral practice shape environmental governance within the Kajang indigenous community of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with 27 participants and secondary ecological data, the study demonstrates that ecological sustainability is sustained not through formal institutional regulation but through culturally embedded systems of lived religion and collective moral obligation. Central to this system is the cosmological concept of anrongta, which positions nature as a sacred maternal entity requiring protection, restraint, and reciprocal ethical responsibility. This cosmology is operationalized through a structured forest zoning system (Borong Karama, Borong Batasayya, Borong Luarayya) reinforced by customary sanctions (ba'bala) and ritual practices. The findings further reveal that women occupy central positions through the institutionalized role of Anrongta, functioning as advisor to the Ammatoa and participant in customary deliberations. Significantly, the Kajang case reveals a complex gender dynamic in which feminist goals of environmental care are enforced through masculine mechanisms, demonstrating that ecofeminism in this context transcends essentialist binaries. By integrating lived religion, ecofeminism, and indigenous cosmology, this article argues that cosmologically embedded governance constitutes a form of sacred ecology in which religion, gender, morality, and environmental sustainability are mutually embedded within ordinary social life. The study contributes to the sociology of religion by expanding understandings of lived religion beyond institutional settings and by demonstrating how indigenous religious systems may function as culturally grounded mechanisms of sustainability governance.