Face-veiled Women in Contemporary Indonesia

Face-veiled Women in Contemporary Indonesia
Author: Eva F. Nisa
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2022-09-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000647056

Face veiling is relatively new in Indonesia. It is often stereotyped as a sign of extremism and the growing Arabisation of Indonesian Muslims. It is also perceived as a symbol that demonstrates a lack of female agency. However, increasing numbers of women are choosing to wear the cadar (the full face veil). This book provides an ethnographic study of these women: why they choose to wear the cadar, embody strict religious disciplinary practices and the consequences of that choice. The women in this book belong to two Islamic revivalist movements: various Salafi groups and the Tablīghī Jamāʿat. Indonesia has constantly witnessed transformations in the meanings and practices of Islam, and this book demonstrates that women are key actors in this process. Nisa demonstrates that contrary to stereotypes, the women in this study have an agency which is expressed through their chosen docility and obedience.

The Many Faces of Subud

The Many Faces of Subud
Author: Riantee Lydia Rand
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2005-04-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469117479

Subud is a direct and spontaneous spiritual experience that allows people to receive a contact with the Great Life Force. It re-awakens their inner feeling and puts them in touch with their own guidance, eventually bringing to the surface their true nature which was before obstructed and cluttered with erroneous beliefs, ancestral patterns of behavior, culture, education and their family malfunctions. Many have found a deeper understanding of their own religious beliefs from the evidence they receive for themselves. Others have come to actualize their true talent and work. There are Subud groups in eighty countries, bringing together harmoniously people of many different religious and ethnic backgrounds. The spiritual practice, or latihan, arises from within. It is a natural process that occurs without effort or study. This book is the result of the collaborative effort of three women who have practiced the latihan of Subud for decades. It compiles testimonies of Subud members from all over the world, on different topics. Each chapter begins with a short account of observations, experiences, receivings and dreams on the subject. People interviewed were of different age groups, social and ethnic backgrounds, some newly opened in Subud, some older members, some second and third generation Subud. The opening latihan when one first receives this contact - is a ceremony of introduction into the spiritual exercise after a three-month period of inquiry referred to as the probation or investigation period. Through the latihan people renew their contact with the power of God and become aware of the latent powers that reside in all of humankind. The central feature of Subud is the latihan kejiwaan, or inner training, which takes place for half an hour up to an hour, two or three times a week, and is practiced by men and women separately. Subud has little doctrinal teaching except for the belief in divine power and higher centers of consciousness. The implication is that people practicing the latihan align themselves with those higher centers. It is available to any person seventeen and older who has a sincere wish to worship God and wants to receive this contact. The action of the latihan within each person allows the power of God to express itself spontaneously through singing, chanting, shouting, moving, dancing, crying, laughing, etc. Subuds founder, Bapak Muhammad Subuh, explains that in this way, when in the latihan we make a complete surrender to the Power of God (or the Great Life Force), we can receive the education of our inner selves, free from interference by our minds and hearts and according to our own individual needs. Participants have often reported strong feelings of rapture and release, psychological and physical healing. During latihan, one lets go of thoughts and emotions in order to follow what surfaces: those movements and sounds that spontaneously arise from deep within. It is a form of cleansing which allows the worship of God to become stronger and less obstructed, a training that lets individuals get in touch, develop and trust their inner guidance, enabling the complete self to emerge through an action that comes from beyond the thinking and the will.

Breaking Barriers

Breaking Barriers
Author: Aimee Dawis
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2012-06-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1462914055

As members of a tiny ethnic minority in Indonesia--the world's largest Islamic nation--Chinese-Indonesian women face hurdles of race and gender that others would find insurmountable. In Breaking Barriers, author Aimee Dawis profiles nine highly accomplished women who have overcome these obstacles and thrived. In this book you'll meet: an Olympic gold medalist a world-class concert pianist a media mogul and style icon Plus six other extraordinary personalities in the worlds of business, science, sports, politics and the arts. In these profiles, Dawis shows us how Chinese-Indonesian women serve the needs of family and community while carving out a strong and independent role for themselves in their chosen fields through determination, a belief in their ability and strong pride in their ethnic roots. These Asian women may be members of a minority group, but their stories provide inspiration for future generations of Chinese-Indonesian women, and women everywhere.

How Do We Look?

How Do We Look?
Author: Fatimah Tobing Rony
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2021-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 147802190X

In How Do We Look? Fatimah Tobing Rony draws on transnational images of Indonesian women as a way to theorize what she calls visual biopolitics—the ways visual representation determines which lives are made to matter more than others. Rony outlines the mechanisms of visual biopolitics by examining Paul Gauguin’s 1893 portrait of Annah la Javanaise—a trafficked thirteen-year-old girl found wandering the streets of Paris—as well as US ethnographic and documentary films. In each instance, the figure of the Indonesian woman is inextricably tied to discourses of primitivism, savagery, colonialism, exoticism, and genocide. Rony also focuses on acts of resistance to visual biopolitics in film, writing, and photography. These works, such as Rachmi Diyah Larasati’s The Dance that Makes You Vanish, Vincent Monnikendam’s Mother Dao (1995), and the collaborative films of Nia Dinata, challenge the naturalized methods of seeing that justify exploitation, dehumanization, and early death of people of color. By theorizing the mechanisms of visual biopolitics, Rony elucidates both its violence and its vulnerability.

Bombshell

Bombshell
Author: Mia Bloom
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2011-01-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 014318024X

Set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach – and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family – The Bodysurfers is an Australian classic. A short-story collection which has become a bestseller and been adapted for film, television, radio and the theatre, The Bodysurfers on its first publication marked a major change in Australian literature.

One Head, Many Faces

One Head, Many Faces
Author: G. Reesink
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004454381

The Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea covers some 30,000 square kilometres of enormously varied landscape. Although it is home to an indigenous population of just 114,000, these people share more than twenty languages. Wider knowledge of the peninsula was recently gained through an extensive interdisciplinary research project (ISIR) involving anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists, demographers, geologists, linguists, and specialists in public administration. In analysing the findings of the project, this book provides a systematic comparison with earlier studies, addressing the geological past, the latest archaeological evidence of early human habitation (dating back at least 26,000 years), and the region s diversity of languages and cultures. The peninsula is an important transitional area between Southeast Asia and Oceania, and this book provides valuable new insights for specialists in both the social and natural sciences into processes of state formation and globalization in the Asia Pacific zone. Jelle Miedema studied sociology and anthropology at Groningen University. Awarded his PhD at Nijmegen University, he became coordinator of the ISIR project at Leiden University. His research topics include ethnohistory, kinship, and religion.

Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism

Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism
Author: Pnina Werbner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000181421

Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism inaugurates a new, situated, cosmopolitan anthropology. It examines the rise of postcolonial movements responsive to global rights movements, which espouse a politics of dignity, cultural difference, democracy, dissent and tolerance. The book starts from the premise that cosmopolitanism is not, and never has been, a 'western', elitist ideal exclusively. The book's major innovation is to show the way cosmopolitans beyond the North--in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia, India, Africa, the Middle East and Mexico--juggle universalist commitments with roots in local cultural milieus and particular communities.Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism breaks new ground in theorizing the role of social anthropology as a discipline that engages with the moral, economic, legal and political transformations and dislocations of a globalizing world. It introduces the reader to key debates surrounding cosmopolitanism in the social sciences, and is written clearly and accessibly for undergraduates in anthropology and related subjects.