The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond

The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond
Author: Michel Picard
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2017-08-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319562304

This volume investigates various processes by which world religions become localized, as well as how local traditions in Southeast Asia and Melanesia become universalized. In the name of modernity and progress, the contemporary Southeast Asian states tend to press their populations to have a ‘religion,' claiming that their local, indigenous practices and traditions do not constitute religion. Authors analyze this ‘religionization,’ addressing how local people appropriate religion as a category to define some of their practices as differentiated from others, whether they want to have a religion or are constrained to demonstrate that they profess one. Thus, ‘religion’ is what is regarded as such by these local actors, which might not correspond to what counts as religion for the observer. Furthermore, local actors do not always concur regarding what their religion is about, as religion is a contested issue. In consequence, each of the case studies in this volume purposes to elucidate what gets identified and legitimized as ‘religion’, by whom, for what purpose, and under what political conditions.

A History of Christianity in Indonesia

A History of Christianity in Indonesia
Author: Karel Steenbrink
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1003
Release: 2008-08-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047441834

Indonesia is the home of the largest single Muslim community of the world. Its Christian community, about 10% of the population, has until now received no overall description in English. Through cooperation of 26 Indonesian and European scholars, Protestants and Catholics, a broad and balanced picture is given of its 24 million Christians. This book sketches the growth of Christianity during the Portuguese period (1511-1605), it presents a fair account of developments under the Dutch colonial administration (1605-1942) and is more elaborate for the period of the Indonesian Republic (since 1945). It emphasizes the regional differences in this huge country, because most Christians live outside the main island of Java. Muslim-Christian relations, as well as the tensions between foreign missionaries and local theology, receive special attention.

Leading from the North

Leading from the North
Author: Ruth Wallace
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2021-09-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1760464430

Leading from the North aims to improve public dialogue around the future of Northern Australia to underpin robust and flexible planning and policy frameworks. A number of areas are addressed including social infrastructure, governance systems, economic, business and regional development, climate and its implications, the roles and trends in demography and migration in the region. This book not only speaks to the issues of development in Northern Australia but also other regional areas, and examines opportunities for growth with changing economies and technologies. The authors of this book consist of leading researchers, academics and experts from Charles Darwin University, The Australian National University, James Cook University, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and many other collaborative partners. Many of the authors have first-hand experience of living and working in Northern Australia. They understand the real issues and challenges faced by people living in Northern Australia and other similar regional areas. Backed by their expertise and experience, the authors present their discussions and findings from a local perspective.

Travelling towards Home

Travelling towards Home
Author: Nicola Frost
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2018-09-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785339567

As we grapple with a growing refugee crisis, a hardening of anti-immigration sentiment, and deepening communal segregation in many parts of the developed world, questions of the nature of home and homemaking are increasingly critical. This collection brings ethnographic insight into the practices of homemaking, exploring a diverse range of contexts ranging from economic migrants to new Chinese industrial cities, Jewish returnees from Israel to Ukraine, and young gay South Asians in London. While negotiating widely varying social-political contexts, these studies suggest an unavoidably multiple understanding of home, while provoking new understandings of the material and symbolic process of making oneself “at home.”

Renegotiating Boundaries

Renegotiating Boundaries
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 574
Release: 2014-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004260439

For decades almost the only social scientists who visited Indonesia’s provinces were anthropologists. Anybody interested in politics or economics spent most of their time in Jakarta, where the action was. Our view of the world’s fourth largest country threatened to become simplistic, lacking that essential graininess. Then, in 1998, Indonesia was plunged into a crisis that could not be understood with simplistic tools. After 32 years of enforced stability, the New Order was at an end. Things began to happen in the provinces that no one was prepared for. Democratization was one, decentralization another. Ethnic and religious identities emerged that had lain buried under the blanket of the New Order’s modernizing ideology. Unfamiliar, sometimes violent forms of political competition and of rentseeking came to light. Decentralization was often connected with the neo-liberal desire to reduce state powers and make room for free trade and democracy. To what extent were the goals of good governance and a stronger civil society achieved? How much of the process was ‘captured’ by regional elites to increase their own powers? Amidst the new identity politics, what has happened to citizenship? These are among the central questions addressed in this book. This volume is the result of a two-year research project at KITLV. It brings together an international group of 24 scholars – mainly from Indonesia and the Netherlands but also from the United States, Australia, Germany, Canada and Portugal.

Orphaned Landscapes

Orphaned Landscapes
Author: Patricia Spyer
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0823298701

Less than a year after the end of authoritarian rule in 1998, huge images of Jesus Christ and other Christian scenes proliferated on walls and billboards around a provincial town in eastern Indonesia where conflict had arisen between Muslims and Christians. A manifestation of the extreme perception that emerged amid uncertainty and the challenge to seeing brought on by urban warfare, the street paintings erected by Protestant motorbike-taxi drivers signaled a radical departure from the aniconic tradition of the old colonial church, a desire to be seen and recognized by political authorities from Jakarta to the UN and European Union, an aim to reinstate the Christian look of a city in the face of the country’s widespread islamicization, and an opening to a more intimate relationship to the divine through the bringing-into-vision of the Christian god. Stridently assertive, these affectively charged mediations of religion, masculinity, Christian privilege and subjectivity are among the myriad ephemera of war, from rumors, graffiti, incendiary pamphlets, and Video CDs, to Peace Provocateur text-messages and children’s reconciliation drawings. Orphaned Landscapes theorizes the production of monumental street art and other visual media as part of a wider work on appearance in which ordinary people, wittingly or unwittingly, refigure the aesthetic forms and sensory environment of their urban surroundings. The book offers a rich, nuanced account of a place in crisis, while also showing how the work on appearance, far from epiphenomenal, is inherent to sociopolitical change. Whether considering the emergence and disappearance of street art or the atmospherics and fog of war, Spyer demonstrates the importance of an attunement to elusive, ephemeral phenomena for their palpable and varying effects in the world. Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, and Appearance in Indonesia is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

Rioting for Representation

Rioting for Representation
Author: Risa J. Toha
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2021-11-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 100900882X

Ethnic riots are a costly and all too common occurrence during political transitions in multi-ethnic settings. Why do ethnic riots occur in certain parts of a country and not others? How does violence eventually decline? Drawing on rich case studies and quantitative evidence from Indonesia between 1990 and 2012, this book argues that patterns of ethnic rioting are not inevitably driven by inter-group animosity, weakness of state capacity, or local demographic composition. Rather, local ethnic elites strategically use violence to leverage their demands for political inclusion during political transition and that violence eventually declines as these demands are accommodated. Toha breaks new ground in showing that particular political reforms—increased political competition, direct local elections, and local administrative units partitioning—in ethnically diverse contexts can ameliorate political exclusion and reduce overall levels of violence between groups.

Catholics in Independent Indonesia: 1945-2010

Catholics in Independent Indonesia: 1945-2010
Author: Karel Steenbrink
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 653
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004285423

Catholics in Independent Indonesia: 1945-2010 concludes Steenbrink’s three volume historical account of Catholicism in Indonesia with a detailed report of the survival and growth of this minority religion in Muslim Indonesia since its independence in 1945. Colonial Catholicism survived in the independent Republic of Indonesia during the nationalist Sukarno regime (1945-1965) and regained a new dynamic during the general religious revival that was part of the New Order of Soeharto after 1965. From a Dutch-inspired institution it became a fully Indonesian steered community with a modern and international character. The second half of the book will deal with the different regional developments in this vast country.

Social Science and Power in Indonesia

Social Science and Power in Indonesia
Author: Vedi R. Hadiz
Publisher: Equinox Publishing
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9793780010

The premise of Social Science and Power in Indonesia is that the role and development of social sciences in Indonesia over the past fifty years are inextricably related to the shifting requirements of power. What is researched and what is not, which frameworks achieve paradigmatic status while others are marginalized, and which kinds of social scientists become influential while others are ignored are all matters of power. These and other important themes and issues are critically explored by some of Indonesia's foremost social scientists in this seminal work.