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This book presents new perspectives on Southeast Asia using cases from a range of ethnic groups, cultures and histories, written by scholars from different ethnicities, generations, disciplines and scientific traditions. It examines various research trajectories, engaging with epistemological debates on the ‘global’ and ‘local’, on ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and the role played by personal experiences in the collection and analysis of empirical data. The volume provides subjects for debate rarely addressed in formal approaches to data gathering and analysis. Rather than grappling with the usual methodological building blocks of research training, it focuses on neglected issu...
Few religious innovations have shaped Chinese history like the emergence of spirit-writing during the Song dynasty. From a divinatory technique it evolved into a complex ritual practice used to transmit messages and revelations from the Gods. This resulted in the production of countless religious scriptures that now form an essential corpus, widely venerated and recited to this day, that is still largely untapped by research. Using historical and ethnographic approaches, this volume for the first time offers a comprehensive overview of the history of spirit-writing, examining its evolution over a millennium, the practices and technologies used, and the communities involved.
This collection of essays examines how Southeast Asian women writers engage with the grand narratives of nationalism and the modern nation-state by exploring the representations of gender, identity and nation in the postcolonial literatures of Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Bringing to light the selected works of overlooked local women writers and providing new analyses of those produced by internationally-known women authors and artists, the essays situate regional literary developments within historicized geopolitical landscapes to offer incisive analyses and readings on how women and the feminine are imagined, represented, and positioned in relatio...
The book shows how the Chinese minority is much more diverse, and the picture much richer and more complicated, than previous studies have allowed. Subjects covered include the historical development of Chinese communities in peripheral areas of Indonesia, the religious practices of Chinese Indonesians, which are by no means confined to "Chinese" religions, and Chinese ethnic events, where a wide range of Indonesians, not just Chinese, participate.
This edited volume introduces dynamic approaches to the study of Southeast Asia’s environmental diversity from different disciplinary perspectives at the interface between the natural and social sciences. It brings together research on the region’s environmental resource use and shared ecological challenges in the context of present day globalization to offer insights for possible future directions. The book introduces unique approaches to the study of Southeast Asia’s environmental changes and resource management under the influence of intensifying economic change in the region. It also examines the slow erosion of Southeast Asia’s rich environment and addresses serious issues such ...
"The Yiguandao (Way of Pervading Unity) was one of the major redemptive societies of Republican China. It is nowadays one of the largest and most influential religious movements of the Chinese world and at the same time one of the least known and understood. From its powerful base in Taiwan, it develops worldwide, including in Mainland China where it nevertheless remains officially forbidden. Based on extensive ethnographic work carried out over nearly a decade, Reclaiming the Wilderness explores the expansionary dynamics of this group and its regional circulations such as they can be primarily observed from a Hong Kong perspective. It analyses the proselytizing impetus of the adepts, the tr...
Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents takes a comparative approach to understanding religion under communism, arguing that communism was integral to the global experience of secularism. Bringing together leading researchers whose work spans the Eurasian continent, it shows that appropriating religion was central to Communist political practices.
The discourse on migration outcomes in the West has largely been dominated by issues of integration, but it is more relevant to view immigration in non-Western societies in relation to practices of exclusion and inclusion. Exclusion refers to a situation in which individuals and groups are usually denied access to the goods, services, activities and resources associated with citizenship. However, this approach has been criticised in relation to gender issues, which are very relevant to the situation of migrants. The authors in this volume address this criticism. Furthermore, when framed within a North–South discourse, it may be potentially ethnocentric to assume that the experience of excl...
As Southeast Asia experiences unprecedented economic modernization, religious and moral practices are being challenged as never before. From Thai casinos to Singaporean megachurches, from the practitioners of Islamic Finance in Jakarta to Pentecostal Christians in rural Cambodia, this volume discusses the moral complexities that arise when religious and economic developments converge. In the past few decades, Southeast Asia has seen growing religious pluralism and antagonisms as well as the penetration of a market economy and economic liberalism. Providing a multidisciplinary, cross-regional snapshot of a region in the midst of profound change, this text is a key read for scholars of religion, economists, non-governmental organization workers, and think-tankers across the region.
What is the relationship between syncretism and diaspora? Caodaism is a large but almost unknown new religion that provides answers to this question. Born in Vietnam during the struggles of decolonization, shattered and spatially dispersed by cold war conflicts, it is now reshaping the goals of its four million followers. Colorful and strikingly eclectic, its “outrageous syncretism” incorporates Chinese, Buddhist, and Western religions as well as world figures like Victor Hugo, Jeanne d’Arc, Vladimir Lenin, and (in the USA) Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. The book looks at the connections between “the age of revelations” (1925-1934) in French Indochina and the “age of dia...