GLOBAL ASIA  2 GLOBAL ASIA 

Gottowik (ed.)
Publications

Modernity is surrounded by an almost magical aura that casts a spell over

people all over the world. To connect with modernity, various ways and
means are used, among them magic practices and religious ideas. Dynamics
of Religion in Southeast Asia: Magic and Modernity deals with the magic in
and of modernity and asks about its current significance for the dynamics
of religion in Southeast Asia. Drawing on recent ethnographic research
in this area, the contributors to this wide-ranging volume demonstrate
how religious concepts contribute to meeting the challenges of modernity.
Against this background, religion and modernity are no longer perceived as
contradictionary; rather, it is argued that a revision of the western notion of
religion is required to understand the complexity of multiple modernities

Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia

in a globalised world.

Volker Gottowik is Associate Professor at the University of Frankfurt; currently

he is working as a senior researcher in the area studies network Dynamics
of Religion in Southeast Asia (DORISEA) at the Department of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, University of Heidelberg. He has conducted extensive
fieldwork in Indonesia. Edited by Volker Gottowik

Dynamics of Religion
in Southeast Asia
Magic and Modernity

ISBN: 978-90-8964-424-4

AUP. nl
9 789089 644244
 Publications

The International Institute for Asian Studies is a research and exchange platform based in Leiden,
the Netherlands. Its objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and
to promote (inter)national cooperation. IIAS focuses on the humanities and social sciences and on
their interaction with other sciences. It stimulates scholarship on Asia and is instrumental in forging
research networks among Asia Scholars. Its main research interest are reflected in the three book
series published with Amsterdam University Press: Global Asia, Asian Heritages and Asian Cities.

IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing together various parties in Asia and other parts
of the world. The Institute works as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails
activities such as providing information services, the construction and support of international
networks and cooperative projects, and the organisation of seminars and conferences. In this way,
IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural
rapprochement between Europe and Asia.

IIAS Publications Officer: Paul van der Velde

IIAS Assistant Publications Officer: Mary Lynn van Dijk

Global Asia

Asia has a long history of transnational linkage with other parts of the world. Yet the contribution of
Asian knowledge, values, and practices in the making of the modern world has largely been overlooked
until recent years. The rise of Asia is often viewed as a challenge to the existing world order. Such a
bifurcated view overlooks the fact that the global order has been shaped by Asian experiences as
much as the global formation has shaped Asia. The Global Asia Series takes this understanding as the
point of departure. It addresses contemporary issues related to transnational interactions within the
Asian region, as well as Asias projection into the world through the movement of goods, people, ideas,
knowledge, ideologies, and so forth. The series aims to publish timely and well-researched books that
will have the cumulative effect of developing new perspectives and theories about global Asia.

Series Editor: Tak-Wing Ngo, Professor of Political Science, University of Macau, China
Editorial Board: Kevin Hewison, Sir Walter Murdoch Distinguished Professor of Politics and
International Studies, Murdoch University, Australia / Hagen Koo, Professor of Sociology, University
of Hawaii, USA / Loraine Kennedy, Directrice de recherch, Centre dtudes de lInde et de lAsie
du Sud, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, France / Guobin Yang, Associate Professor,
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Dynamics of Religion in
SoutheastAsia
Magic and Modernity

Edited by
Volker Gottowik

Amsterdam University Press

 Publications

Global Asia 2

Cover illustration: Chiang Khong, North Thailand, Volker Gottowik 2010

Cover design: Cordesign, Leiden

Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout

Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by
the University of Chicago Press.

isbn 978 90 8964 424 4

e-isbn 978 90 4851 627 8 (pdf)
nur 718 / 719 / 761

Volker Gottowik / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2014

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book.
 Table of Contents

Preface 7

Introduction 9
Volker Gottowik

Modern Spirits

Spirits in and of Southeast Asias Modernity 33

An Overview
Peter J. Brunlein

The Social Placing of Religion and Spirituality in Vietnam in the

Context of Asian Modernity 55
Perspectives for Research
Michael Dickhardt

Where the Dead Go to the Market 75

Market and Ritual as Social Systems in Upland Southeast Asia
Guido Sprenger

Modernity and Spirit Possession in Java 91

Horse Dance and Its Contested Magic
Paul Christensen

Modern Muslims

Hadhrami Moderns 113

Recurrent Dynamics as Historical Rhymes of Indonesias Reformist
Islamic Organization Al-Irsyad
Martin Slama

Mubeng Beteng 133

A Contested Ritual of Circumambulation in Yogyakarta
Susanne Rodemeier
Muslim Modernities in Makassar and Yogyakarta 155
Negotiating the West as a Frame of Reference
Melanie V. Nertz

Cosmological Battles 175

Understanding Susceptibility and Resistance to Transnational
Islamic Revivalism in Java
Thomas Reuter

Modern Traditions

Modes of Interreligious Coexistence and Civility in Maluku 193

Birgit Bruchler

Ethnicity and Violence in Bali 217

And What Barong Landung Says about It
Volker Gottowik

Contested Moksa in Balinese Agama Hindu 237

Balinese Death Rituals between Ancestor Worship and Modern
Hinduism
Annette Hornbacher

Good Girls 261

Christianity, Modernity and Gendered Morality in Tanah Karo,
North Sumatra
Karin Klenke

Bukit Kasih, the Hill of Love 281

Multireligiosity for Pleasure
Judith Schlehe

Notes on Contributors 299

Bibliography 305
 Preface

Southeast Asia is a crossroads of many religious influences, which have

always been treated syncretically. One precondition for this basically
peaceful syncretism is the fact that the different religious communities
largely eschew orthodoxy and content themselves with their followers
commitment to a particular ritual practice (orthopractice). As a result, the
superseding of indigenous religions by Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and
other world religions has been left incomplete. As a result, today Southeast
Asia still presents a highly complex culturally and religiously dynamic
picture.
The striving for supremacy of certain world religions is a relatively recent
phenomenon in Southeast Asia. It is taking place in the wake of an expan-
sion of the scriptural religions and their interpretation as monotheisms.
Although these monotheistic religions largely appear to have superseded
indigenous beliefs, in local conditions not only these beliefs but also the
mechanisms of conflict regulation they have shaped have both survived.
One of these mechanisms is religious practice organized not exactly along
confessional lines, but rather incorporating adherents of different religious
communities ritually and committing them normatively to common values.
In this way, in many parts of Southeast Asia a local ethos has survived in
confronting processes of globalization.
This local ethos draws sustenance from the revitalization of putative
traditions, which have simultaneously been subjected to an innovative
process of reinterpretation. In this process, moments of a flexible and
reflexive confrontation with both expanding world religions and Western
modernity can be recognized. Against this background, indigenous religions
function not least as a resource for a critique of modernization. As a result,
the creative re-appropriation of traditional beliefs not only has far-reaching
impacts on interethnic relations, but also casts new light on old theoretical
conceptions, such as magic and modernity.
The present volume deals with magic and modernity and asks about
their current significance for the dynamics of religion in Southeast Asia.
In altogether thirteen articles it is demonstrated how religious conceptions
and magic practices contribute to meeting the challenges of modernity.
Against this background, religion and modernity are no longer perceived as
existing in contradiction; rather, it is argued that a revision of the western
notion of religion is required to understand the complexity of multiple
modernities in a globalized world.
8 Dynamics of Religion in SoutheastAsia

The present volume has resulted from a scientific network sponsored by

the German Research Foundation (DFG) over a period of four years. As a
group of almost ten junior scholars from various universities in Germany, we
were granted the opportunity to organize six conferences, invite colleagues
and international guests and discuss with them the Religious Dynamics in
Southeast Asia. We would like to thank first the respective anthropological
departments at the universities of Mnster, Munich, Freiburg, Gttingen
and Frankfurt/M. which hosted our conferences, and secondly our interna-
tional guests, who provided considerable inputs to productive discussions
and a cordial working atmosphere: Andr Feillard (Paris), Goh Beng-Lan
(Singapore/Leiden), Michel Picard (Paris), Thomas Reuter (Melbourne) and
Peter van der Veer (Amsterdam/Gttingen). Finally we would like to thank
the DFG for its generous support, including a publication grant which made
this volume possible.
In 2011, our scientif ic network was transferred into a competence
network, sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF), which gave us the opportunity to continue our research on the
Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia (DORISEA). While some contribu-
tors to this volume refer in their articles to previous and completed research
projects, others have chosen to introduce their new projects and to present
their initial findings. The mixture of articles referring to projects just started
or just completed is due to the transitional stage or liminal period out of
which the idea for this volume emerged. However, since the majority of
contributors are associated with at least one of the two networks mentioned
above, the present volume documents our continuous engagement with the
dynamics of religion in Southeast Asia.
Furthermore, we would like to thank the German Anthropological As-
sociation (DGV) for its support and also the two anonymous referees who
provided encouraging criticism. Finally our gratitude goes to Amsterdam
University Press and Mary Lynn van Dijk, who always offered advice, even
when we have encroached on her patience.
Readers who are interested in our ongoing research and want to follow
how we have proceeded with our engagement with the dynamics of religion
in Southeast Asia can take note of our homepage, where the latest informa-
tion is provided: http://www.dorisea.de/en
 Introduction
Volker Gottowik

The present volume aims to analyze the relationship between religion and
modernity in terms of the dynamic processes by which they are connected. In
doing so, it draws on a variety of discourses in the social and cultural sciences
that address the question of modernity by locating it between the conflicting
priorities of the dis-enchantment and re-enchantment of the world. In these
discourses, it is widely agreed that, particularly outside Western Europe,
processes of secularization did not happen as predicted. However, an open
question remains: if modernity is not able to transform religion into reason,
what, then, can modernity do with religion? By explicitly raising this issue, the
present volume tries to describe the dynamic relationship between religion
and modernity by referring to Southeast Asia as an ethnographic example.
Southeast Asia has always been a crossroads of many different influences
from India, China and Europe. All global religions are represented in the
area, and they interact not only with each other, but also with local belief
systems. Majority religions in some parts of Southeast Asia find themselves
to be minority religions in others. However, it is not only religions that
crisscross geographical and political boundaries people do so as well.
The result is an impressive network of ethnic and religious groups that
define themselves not only in relation and in opposition to each other but
also vis--vis a rapidly changing world. The present volume deals with the
impact of modernity on ethnic and religious plurality in Southeast Asia
with special reference to these interactive processes.
According to modernization theory, one of the master narratives of the
second half of the twentieth century, the relationship between modernity
and religion is competitive, contradictory and mutually exclusive. The
assumption has prevailed in the social and cultural sciences that the dif-
ferentiation of capitalist forms of economy and the modern nation-state,
together with the rationalization of the conduct of life, would subject
religion to encompassing transformations. The thesis of the progressive
secularization of the world is associated with Max Weber in particular,
though in his works it remained peculiarly undetermined whether the
Entzauberung der Welt would make religion disappear altogether or
restrict it to the private sphere alone (cf. Weber 1985 [1922]: 612).
Since then, however, it has become obvious that this universalistic ap-
proach was leading to arbitrary generalizations of some West European lines
10  Volker Got towik

of development, while its teleological orientation remained largely strange,

not least to scholars in Southeast Asian countries. On closer examination,
however, this does not come as a surprise.
The assumption was that, as a process of ongoing rationalization, mod-
ernization would proceed from the West and finally spread to all other
continents: rooted in ancient Greece and Rome, re-emerging in Renaissance,
blooming during the Age of Enlightenment, expanding with imperialism
and culminating in the age of globalization, modernization was considered
to be a universal phenomenon which, as an influential narrative, ultimately
became a strong identity marker of the West vis--vis the rest of the world
(cf. Asad 1993a: 18 and Houben & Schrempf 2008: 8).
In any case, the West had defined itself strongly through this historical
construction and made the project of modernity including its aim of
material and moral progress exclusively its own (cf. Asad 1993a: 18). It was
not only the formation of the nation-state and civil society, the development
of a capitalist economy and rational conduct, but also the separation in
principle of church and state and the granting of religious freedom that were
considered to be crucial achievements of this Western-initiated process of
modernization and differentiation, which would ultimately lead to greater
freedom and prosperity for all.
In this respect, modernity has its own history, conceptualized as an
ongoing process with its own dynamics and a decisively predicted result:
it was not only the rationalization of the world that was put on the agenda,
but also its Westernization (cf. Asad 1993a: 18). At this point, however, it
becomes obvious that modernity is not only profoundly historical, it is
also profoundly ideological, a Eurocentric vision of universal teleology
(Comaroff & Comaroff 1993: xxx).
Against this background, the question raised in the present volume is
how the ideology of modernity was able to expand and spread over the
whole world. What is the attraction to being modern or becoming modern,
or staying modern?

From modernity to multiple modernities

Historical concept analysis reveals that, from the beginning, the notions of
modernity and the modern refer to the experience of time; their present
use, however, reflects the growing importance of the future (cf. Kaufmann
1989: 38f.). This orientation towards the future finds its expression not
least in everyday language, where progress and change in particular are
Introduc tion 11

associated with modernity. Modernity stands for flexibility in the sense

of the ability to produce constant adjustment and modification, thereby
turning into a category of revision and transformation. In other words,
the programme of modernity is perfectibility (cf. Kaufmann 1989: 39, 41).
The constant search for the very latest as what is supposed to be better
leads to a situation in which the future, defined as an open future, denigrates
the present and challenges the past. For this reason, modernity is best un-
derstood as the legitimization of permanent change (Kaufmann 1989: 35).
For modern man to adapt to the dynamics of change is an ongoing
requirement if he wants to avoid the stigma of being old-fashioned, since
what is modern today is already considered backward tomorrow. Modernity
has to renew itself constantly on its own terms and to overcome what it has
generated as recently as yesterday. The ambivalence of modernity becomes
apparent at this point, as does its inherent antinomy, which promotes its
internal dynamics and impels it to spread globally (cf. Eisenstadt 2000b:
245): modernity is a future-oriented project that requires constant trans-
formations towards its unattainable completion.
To be modern implies keeping pace with the times and anticipating to-
morrows trends today. As it is associated with being educated, sophisticated
and development-oriented, to be modern has positive connotations that
are advocated and appreciated socially. They charge the idea of modernity
with a normative substance, which fueled the implementation of its central
ideas (cf. Joas 2012: 23).
The degree to which modernitys ideas are normatively grounded be-
comes apparent when modernity is seen as a global project: the Projekt
der Moderne consists, in the words of Jrgen Habermas (1994: 42), in
developing science, morality, law and the arts undeterred and to use their
cognitive potential for a rational re-organization of living conditions. Being
essentially unvollendet or unfinished, modernity captures all spheres of
society economy, politics, culture and imposes itself on its members
through education, the media etc., although with different and sometimes
surprising results.
However, the almost magic aura of modernity, to which the title of this
volume alludes, becomes apparent at this point: modernity is able not only
to subject all spheres of life to the dynamics of transformation, but also to
legitimize this transformation, as it is supposed to redound to the advantage
of all. In so doing, modernity has triggered one of the strongest social and
political dynamics in the history of mankind (cf. Eisenstadt 2000b: 26).
However, the expansion of modernity has resulted not in a unilinear pro-
cess of modernization and a singular or global modernity but in a variety of
12  Volker Got towik

modernities, i.e. multiple modernities. This expression was used by Shmuel

Eisenstadt to stress that modernity and Westernization are not identical
(2000a: 2f.). Eisenstadt conceives modernity as a culture or cultural form
that originated in the West, expanded analogues to the world religions, and
evolved or materialized at different places in different ways (cf. Eisenstadt
2006a: 1 and 2006b: 37).
Against conventional convictions, which emphasize the primacy of the
economic system as the substructure of society, the conception of multiple
modernities highlights the cultural dimensions of modernity and its locally
specific characteristics. Such a cultural theory of modernity (C. Taylor 2001:
172) avoids any universalistic determinism and stresses instead the interac-
tion between global and local influences which always endow modernity
with a place and a culturally specific appearance. In the course of this
interaction, some aspects of modernity converge, while others diverge, and
divergence in convergence (C. Taylor 2001: 185) has become characteristic
of global modernization processes. These processes have resulted in the
apparent paradox that people in the world now share much in common
at the same time that they are as differentiated, diverse, and even more
unequal than they were before (Knauft 2002: 22).
However, as a consequence of the multiplication of modernity, designa-
tions for these modernities have multiplied too, with not only multiple
modernities, but also entangled and uneven modernities, indigenous and
alternative modernities, local and vernacular modernities, etc. They all
challenge in varying degrees the universality of the concept of modernity
and stress that, as an analytic concept, modernity can only be used in
the plural or in a localized form. In other words: Modernity has become
global () [but] is importantly regional, multiple, vernacular, or other in
character (Knauft 2002: 1).
As a result of postcolonial criticism and subaltern studies in particular,
the West as the origin and engine of global modernization processes ceased
to be seen as the worlds centre and became only one province among many
other provinces (cf. Chakrabarty 2010: 62). Since modernity is not one but
many, modernity is now everywhere that is, modernity is inescapable
(Gaonkar 2001: 1, 23). As a consequence of the multiplication of modernity,
each and every person is affected by the dynamics of modernity and in some
way or other is becoming modern. However, if everyone is modern, no one is.
A counter-project to modernity is needed to make it a useful analytic
concept. If this counter-project is not pre-modernity, late-modernity or
post-modernity, what else can it be? And when Southeast Asian modernity
is supposed to be the counter-project to West European modernity, why is it
Introduc tion 13

called modernity at all? Alongside this Southeast Asian modernity, is there

still a Southeast Asian tradition? Has the dichotomy between the modern
and the traditional only shifted here from the global to the local or regional
level? Or do we now have to conceive of all traditions as profoundly modern
and all modernities as profoundly traditional?
Beyond these questions, which the present volume tries to address, the
advantages of the concept of multiple modernities are obvious:
1 It separates the notion of modernity from the linear concept of progress
and development that encompassed a premodern and postmodern
period; instead of describing modernization processes teleologically, the
concept of multiple modernities covers their complex and contradictory
formations.
2 It emphasizes that Europe and the European enlightenment are not
identical with modernity; it escapes the dichotomy of the West vis--vis
the rest of the world so that alternative figures of thought or so-called
third spaces become accessible.
3 It recognizes historical and cultural differences beyond existing com-
monalities, thus establishing a pluralistic understanding of social and
cultural transformations.
4 Finally, it emphasizes agency; although modernity cannot be escaped,
through creative adaptations it assumes different forms in terms of place
and culture (cf. Houben & Schrempf 2008: 11).

The last point is important for the central argument of the present volume
regarding the specific forms that modernity is assuming in Southeast Asia
through creative adaptions, which pertain not least to religion.
Religion was considered to be antithetical to modernity, an obstacle
on the path to development, with the expectation that modernity would
finally overcome it. However, modernity and religion turned out not to
be separate domains, but rather intertwined or entangled spheres, with
the result that religion had profound implications for social, political and
economic transformations and vice versa. Religion mediated modernity
on the local level and contributed to its place and culturally bound forma-
tion as modernity embraced and mediated religion, which thus does not
disappear but takes on different forms: religious traditions are expressed
in a modern way.
Therefore it is appropriate not only to speak, for example, of an Indo-
nesian modernity, which differs tremendously from a Japanese or West
European modernity, but also of an Indonesian Islam, in so far as it differs
from Islam in other parts of the world through its locally specific inventory.
14  Volker Got towik

Until recently the veil, for example, was not a central part of this inventory,
but started only twenty or thirty years ago to gain broad public acceptance.
Being a symbol of backwardness and misogyny in the West, in Indonesia at
least in middle-class circles it became a symbol of an informed and in this
sense enlightened or modern Islam, applied in particular by younger women
to dissociate themselves from the supposed ignorance of their mothers.
Modernity has neither suppressed religion nor made it disappear; it has
merely changed the nature of religious expression, and in sometimes quite
unexpected ways as the example from Indonesia demonstrates.
In Southeast Asia, modernity is religious and religion is modern or strug-
gles to become modern. The assumption that tradition and modernity,
religion and development are antagonistic cannot be maintained with
regard to the religious landscape that is under scrutiny here. For the vast
majority of people in Southeast Asia, religion never lost its significance,
and many countries in this area like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, which
experienced periods of the politically motivated suppression of religious
belief systems, are today witnessing a re-enchantment of religion (cf. P.
Taylor 2007).
What has become obvious everywhere is the return of religions (Riese-
brodt 2001), their renewal and revitalization. Even in parts of Western
Europe, where the theory of secularization was not only postulated, but
at least in part made sense, these processes are taking place. Against this
background, concepts that equate the rise of modernity with the fall of
religion completely miss the dynamic relationship connecting modern
religions and religious modernities, and not only in Southeast Asia.

Religion for example

The question of what religion is was raised systematically in the West only
under modern conditions. Originating at the turn of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the contemporary notion of religion denotes first what was considered,
beyond competing denominations and diverging religious demands, to be
binding and mandatory (cf. Kaufmann 1989: 15). The science of religion,
however, was only established as late as the nineteenth century.
Since that time, religion has been conceptualized as a universal category
whose global spread is compared to the emergence of the modern idea of
the nation. Both nation and religion are cultural constructs, products of the
social imagination, but nevertheless quite effective (cf. Veer & Lehmann
1999: 3f.). However, following Victor Turner (1969), the social effectiveness
Introduc tion 15

of religion has to be assessed as rather ambivalent: religion is a stabilizing

as well as a transforming factor in the foundation of multiple modernities.
According to modern understanding, religion is a clearly distinctive
entity with a specific dogma and a specific liturgy: orthodoxy is a main
requirement, and ritual is performed merely to symbolize dogma (cf. Asad
1993c: 60). Among the first to point out that there are religions that man-
age almost without dogma was William Robertson Smith (1889). Clifford
Geertz (1973b: 177) followed this line of argument by emphasizing that the
dogmatism of such religions is restricted to the proper performance of their
rituals. However, measured against the Western notion of religion, these
orthopractic religions appear to be deficient, as they are not equipped
with orthodoxy and, as part and parcel of the social, almost not distinct
from other cultural fields. Seen from this perspective, they are not proper
religions at all.
Against this background, religious studies have attracted strong criticism
from a variety of scholars and disciplines. One such criticism is that the
categories of the Judeo-Christian tradition, like worship, God and salvation,
are applied cross-culturally, where they inevitably lead to distortions (cf.
Fitzgerald 2000: 9). Therefore the notion of religion is regarded as part of
Western ideology, the science of religion as an agency for reproducing
a mystifying ideology, while respective publications merely serve the
reproduction of hegemonic representations of the world (cf. Fitzgerald
2000: ixff.; cf. also Masuzawa 2005).
Regardless of whether this critique is appropriate, the proposed suspen-
sion of particular notions and their replacement through other notions
provides just as poor a solution as to put them a popular academic exercise
in quotations marks. Indeed, much depends on how one conceptualizes
religion and modernity. In the case of modernity, however, the dominant
characteristic must be seen in the ability to renew itself constantly on its
own terms; therefore any definition in terms of set characteristics which
goes beyond modernities principled openness for what counts as new
and innovative must fail. And in the case of religion, while the notion is
indeed fraught with problems, this is true of notions like culture, tradition
and ritual, too. Any attempt to replace them with other notions creed,
civilization, ceremony will inevitably turn out to be no less problematic
and cannot provide a solution.
Rather, it is necessary to problematize these notions in order to explore
their limits and potentials and to analyze how they are used discursively.
What counts as religion or superstition and for whom? What criteria are
used to distinguish between tradition and modernity? To what extent
16  Volker Got towik

do Western or Christian concepts dominate the respective discourses on

religion and modernity?
Since what counts as religion or superstition is historically and socially
constructed (cf. Asad 1993b: 29), it is necessary not only to investigate how
and by whom this distinction was introduced, but also to look for alterna-
tive concepts. This does not mean replacing Euro-centrism with Java- or
Thai-centrism, for example, but juxtaposing local concepts and vernacular
notions with Western ones, discussing them in the light of the respective
other and elaborating differences, that is, potentials and limits. This would
imply using, for example, Southeast Asia not only as a field for data col-
lection, but also as a source for concept formation, not least with regard
to religion and modernity. It was such a juxtaposition of concepts that
made clear that in Western discourses the notion of religion is conceptually
separated from the domain of power, just as the notion of modernity is
conceptually equated with secularization (cf. Asad 1983, 1993b: 28f.).
From the perspective of Southeast Asia, the relationship between moder-
nity and religion emerges in an altogether different light, as the contribu-
tions to this volume demonstrate. By referring to such a perspective, these
contributions describe how conceptual differences condition the way in
which people in Southeast Asia creatively adopt and subversively reject
features of modernity and religion. It is through these creative processes
that they contribute to the establishment of modern religions and religious
modernities in this region.

The rationalization of religion

Religion and modernity form a dynamic relationship that is fueled and

impelled by processes of secularization, rationalization and standardiza-
tion. Against concepts that set religion and modernity in contradiction,
the present volume takes up a line of argument that conceives seculariza-
tion and modernization as processes that comprise the rationalization of
religion. By referring explicitly to this line of argument, a discursive field
is addressed to which the present volume tries to make a contribution.
According to prevailing Western concepts, secularization unfolds in
three dimensions: 1) the differentiation of a religious and a secular sphere;
2) the decline of religious convictions and forms of conduct; and 3) the
restriction of religion to the private sphere (cf. Casanova 1994: 22ff.).
According to Jos Casanova, the differentiation mentioned under point 1
takes place all over the world, although in different ways, and is therefore a
Introduc tion 17

tendency characteristic of all modern societies; however, the other dimen-

sions of secularization (points 2 and 3) have largely failed to materialize. The
three dimensions appear together only in Western Europe, and although
there is a historical connection, there is no structural link between them. In
other words, the decline of religion and its restriction to the private sphere
is not necessarily a structural tendency of modernity, but solely a possible
historical option (cf. Casanova 1994: 22ff.). As a consequence, the secular
nature of modernity and modernization is called into question; if processes
of secularization take place at all, they are certainly not monolithic or
teleological (cf. Hefner 1998: 85).
Up to this point, there is a broad consensus within the social sciences;
more controversial, however, is the question to what extent a rationalization
of religion has occurred as part of the modernization process. Does the
rationalization of all spheres of life in modernity comprise a rationalization
of religion and corresponding convictions and practices?
Clifford Geertz, for example, describes religious modernization and
rationalization as a real process and a development in and of itself, which
finally causes a process of internal conversion (Geertz 1973b: 170, 175, 182).
This conversion within the limits of a particular religious community leads
to the following result: What used to rest on ritual habit is now to rest on
rationalized dogmatic belief (Geertz 1973b: 186).
According to Geertz, rationalization on the levels of dogma and creed is
provoked by a thorough shaking of the foundations of social order (1973b:
173). As a consequence, the social elites find themselves constrained to
legitimize their claim to power: Authority now () demands reasons that
is doctrine (ibid: 186). The process of rationalization comprises, according
to Geertz, the systematization of doctrine, the intensification of religious
concern and the expansion of formal religious organizations (ibid: 187). The
result of this process is a spatial separation of man and God, a gap between
the profane and the sacred which characterizes all rationalized religions.
And it was the acknowledgement and appreciation of the rather rational
character of these religions that finally propelled and facilitated their global
spread (cf. Hefner 1993: 10). However, are modern religions really any more
rational than traditional belief systems? Is polytheism really less rational
than monotheism, the creed in one God really more rational than the creed
in many gods?
Since every creed, regardless of how many gods, deduces its certainties
from a sphere which is inaccessible to empirical experience, Evans-Pritchard
was able to emphasize that Religion is non-rational, even in its rationalized
forms (1965: 118). Therefore religious rationalization, when addressed in the
18  Volker Got towik

present volume, is in line with scholars like Geertz (1973b) or Hefner (1993),
who define it as a systematization and codification of dogma, ritual and
authority. Such a conception of rationalized religion and religious ration-
alization neither implies automatically a higher rationality on the part of
modern belief systems nor a lack of rationality on the part of traditional
religions, but solely that dogmas are formalized, rituals standardized and
authorities institutionalized (cf. Hefner 1993: 19).
Conversion to a rationalized religion does not happen, in the first place,
out of a need for rationality, but for protection, certainty and access to
resources (cf. Hefner 1993: 16). And what could provide a higher degree
of authoritative validity than a denomination that is in the comfortable
position of appealing to a scripture that was revealed by God and whose
message contrary to the chronically unreliable memory of the elders was
conveyed unchanged from generation to generation? At this point, the
scripturalism of world religions becomes crucial as a distinctive feature,
and the certainty that one belongs not only to a large denomination but a
global one is in agreement with the need to make resources accessible and
protection effective.
Rationalization as the formal systematization of religious doctrines, litur-
gies and institutions sets norms that pressurize other religious communities
into adapting to similar processes. In this context, the constitution of the
Republic of Indonesia is a telling example of the attempt to make religion fit
for the challenges of modernity and the normative standards thereby laid
down. In other words, Indonesias constitution not only reflects a modern
concept of religion, it also enforces this concept in Southeast Asias most
populous country.
According to Indonesias constitution, a religion must fulfill the following
criteria to become officially accepted: 1) it has to be monotheistic; 2) it needs
a prophet; and 3) it must possess a revealed scripture (cf. Picard 2011). As
ritual is supposed solely to enact scripture, it is taken for granted that every
denomination has a unique liturgy.
Currently six denominations in Indonesia match these criteria, and at
least some of them, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, match only after
profound adaptation processes that came close to a second invention.
These processes of adaptation or religionization (Picard 2011: 2) transfer
local religious conceptions into systematized and codified belief systems
which comply with a modern concept of religion as they turn themselves
into monotheistic and scripture-based denominations with a normative
orthodoxy and a distinctive liturgy. Other religious communities that do not
match these criteria are not officially accepted but considered to be mere
Introduc tion 19

local traditions ranging somewhere between negligible profane conventions

and backward religious customs.
In this manner, local religions are socially marginalized and put under
pressure to submit to similar processes of rationalization and moderniza-
tion. As a result, doctrines and meanings formalized in religious canons
increasingly characterize local religions in Southeast Asia too, which strive
to meet the requirements of a modern religion in a modern nation-state.
This pressure on local religions is exerted through a growing intolerance
which undermines the rather multi-religious or ecumenical coexistence of
diverging denominations in Southeast Asia and ultimately contributes to
possible violent confrontations along ethnic and religious lines.

Truth claims and the expulsion of ambiguity

The transformation of religion from a system that is almost identical with

culture to an autonomous system was described by the religious scholar and
Egyptologist Jan Assmann (2003). This transformation involves simultane-
ously the shift from a historically developed cult religion to a revealed book
religion and the formation of strong concepts of what is compatible with
its orthodoxy. Only these concepts make possible what Assmann (2003:
12) has called the mosaic distinction, that is, the distinction between true
and false religion, belief and unbelief, knowledge and ignorance. Such an
emphatic concept of truth, which is deduced from a revealed scripture, does
not stand beside other truths, but raises claims of exclusivity. According
to Assmann (ibid: 14), this is what is essentially new about book religions
and scripturalism.
Scripturalism implies that book religions must be intolerant if they take
their distinctions between true and false as normatively mandatory; they
are characterized by a structural intolerance, which ultimately derives
from their exclusive truth claims (cf. Assmann 2003: 26). In contrast, cult
religions do not define their knowledge about their gods through the no-
tions of what is true and false, but accept, according to Assmann (ibid: 28),
contradictory statements: the main concern is not the risk of worshipping
false gods, but rather of neglecting an important deity (ibid: 38).
While cult religions are based on natural evidence, book religions are
based on revealed truth, which sets them in contradiction to other religious
formations. Only the mosaic distinction allows one to draw a boundary
beyond which there exist false gods, idols, superstition, magic, heresy and
other forms of religious untruths (cf. Assmann 2003: 155ff.).
20  Volker Got towik

Following this line of argument, the Islamic scholar Thomas Bauer

introduced the concepts of cultural ambiguity and ambiguity tolerance
to the current debate on the dynamic relationship between religion and
modernity. His investigation starts from the assumption that cultures and
epochs differ tremendously in how they deal with ambiguity, diversity
and plurality. Bauer defines cultural ambiguity as the coexistence of dif-
ferent ethnic and religious groups, the inconclusive nature of allocations
to these groups and the practice of living concurrently in more than only
one of them (2011: 39) . Against this background, Bauer characterizes the
process of modernization as a process of ambiguity extermination (ibid:
15). However, it is not only modernity as a process of rationalization that is
hostile to ambiguity; rationalized, dogmatic religions are also characterized
by increased ambiguity intolerance (ibid: 36). Bauer therefore comes to the
conclusion that the ambiguity intolerance of world religions like Islam is a
phenomenon of modernity (ibid: 53). As a delayed response to the demands
of modernity on the part of Islamic societies, in radical Islamism the West
is confronted with its own ideologization and disambiguization of the
world (ibid: 52).
With this process of disambiguization goes the prevalent assumption that
religions are clear-cut and well-defined entities, in which membership as
with the nation-state can only be acquired exclusively. As a consequence
of the idea that religions are mutually exclusive, open religious systems
have been marginalized and pushed to the verge of public perception and
legitimacy (cf. Kippenberg & Stuckrad 2003: 131). At the same time, religion
as a category became a classificatory device, which has to do with the
construction and maintenance of boundaries (Picard 2011: 3).
As an expression of a modern understanding of a religion, scripture is
privileged over ritual, doctrine and creed over performance and experience,
clear-cut boundaries over inter-faith communalities, etc. In this manner,
religion is purified of any ambiguity, and the idea that members of different
denominations maintain the same sacred sites or share common ritual
practices turns out to be inconsistent with the modern concept of religion.
Therefore the current situation is characterized by the rejection of local
religions and inter-faith practices based on a cross-cultural ethos on the one
hand and the establishment of new boundaries along the lines of ethnicity
and religion on the other (cf. Hauser-Schublin 2011).
The dynamic processes of modernization and religionization described
above are taking place in many parts of Southeast Asia. They convey the
impression that modern religions have lost their ability to discharge the
social-integrative function still attributed to them by Emile Durkheim and
Introduc tion 21

many others due to the boundaries they have erected around themselves.
At least in multi-religious societies, which now prevail worldwide, the
function of religion has obviously been modified, no longer residing in the
symbolization of social ideals and the strengthening of social coherence,
but in the processing of individual experiences of contingency.
Contingency has been defined as everything that is possible but not
necessary (cf. Luhmann 1982: 187), and is connected with the view, held by
Niklas Luhmann (ibid: 213), that alongside processes of social differentia-
tion the contingencies of everyday life also accelerate. The new obscurity
(Habermas 1985) became a sign and symbol of modernity, whose dynamics
of transformation are subjecting the individual to precarious situations
and social dislocations with increased frequency. Against this background,
religion and its global revitalization have to be understood as a reaction to
modernity and its discontents, which derive not least from condensed and
intensified experiences of contingency. Through the transformation and
codification of these experiences, religion finally contributes to making
modernity manageable and its challenges meaningful.

The magic in and of modernity

The interaction between modernity and religion has resulted in multiple

and contradictory reactions, including the apparent paradox that dogma
and magic exist side by side in many parts of Southeast Asia. Magic, counted
among the techniques of religion by Arnold van Gennep (1986 [1909]: 23)
and described by Bronislaw Malinowski (1973 [1948]: 71) as practical art,
takes on modern traits as it gives modernity magical features. In this sense,
we can talk of magic in and of modernity (cf. also Pels 2003: 30, 34); in other
words, of the magical qualities that characterize modernity in a dual sense,
that is, both literally and metaphorically.
The notion that magical practices in modernity prevail has been de-
scribed frequently. Although magic was previously considered to be the
antithesis of modernity, the other or the past of modernity, and was ex-
pected to disappear as rationalization and secularization progress (cf. Pels
2003: 4), recent studies insist that these practices are thoroughly modern
(Kapferer 2002: 15). Witchcraft and sorcery are seen as responses to new
inequalities and power relations (cf. Geschiere 1997: 6ff.), while spirits and
spirit possession are interpreted as discourses on conflict, hegemony and
resistance (Lambek 1996: 239ff.). Modernity not only constitutes magic as
its counterpoint, it also produces its own forms of magic (cf. Pels 2003: 3).
22  Volker Got towik

However, besides modern forms of magic, there is also the magic of

modernity in the sense that modernity is capable of taking religious forms
and of assuming a magical aura. According to Jean and John Comaroff
(1993: xiv), modernity, characterized as an imaginary construction of the
present in terms of a mythic past, has its own magicalities, its own en-
chantment. This enchantment is produced not only by practices associated
with modernity (cf. Pels 2003: 5) technology, education, medicine but
also by images and institutions that disseminate modernitys ideology of
progress and change. They seize and amplify the drive to be or to become
modern, the desires for a style of life associated with economic development
and () material betterment (Knauft 2002: 4). The power of these ideas,
their intrinsic attraction, contributes to the almost magical aura by which
everything modern, or supposed to be modern, is surrounded.
The multiplication of modernity, its global spread and its power to renew
all spheres of life in particular are both cause and result of the magic aura
with which modernity is surrounded. However, magic in and of moder-
nity are two supplementary and complementary aspects (Pels 2003: 4f.).
Moreover, since they remain in a relationship that is subject to dynamic
transformations, they are dialectically related to one another: the mod-
ernization and rationalization of religion, the religionization of traditional
belief systems, simultaneously produces discourses on magical practices
which provide new spaces not only for the expression of ambiguity, but also
for the subversion of and resistance to processes of modernization. Magic
is therefore a means both to become modern and to repel the unintended
consequences of this transformation.
At least implicitly, the present volume investigates processes and dy-
namics that contribute to the magic in and of modernity while avoiding
perpetuating the dichotomies between traditional and modern, magic
and religion, etc. The reference to the magic of modernity in the title of
this volume is therefore more than mere alliteration. With this title, the
present volume tries to undermine the dichotomy by which magic, ritual
and religion that is, the whole sphere of the sacred is pitted against
modernity and to bring religion and modernity into an instructive relation-
ship permitting insights into Southeast Asias dynamics of transformation.
This aim finds expression in the division of the book into three sec-
tions that address the apparent paradoxes the contributors encountered in
Southeast Asia: Modern Spirits, Modern Muslims and Modern Traditions.
The overall intention of the title and subheadings must be seen as chal-
lenging the usual contrapositions of magic and modernity, religion and
rationalization, etc. By doing so, the volume makes plain the contradictory
Introduc tion 23

results of the interaction between modernity and religion in Southeast Asia,

especially the idea of modernity as profoundly religious and religion as
profoundly modern. The book is not alone in this field, as there have been
publications on similar topics with similar titles (cf. Meyer & Pels 2003).
Nevertheless, it aims to contribute to empirical and theoretical debates
on religion and modernity by explicitly referring to the dynamic processes
that transform their internal relationship.
As transformation and change only become apparent against the back-
ground of a spatio-temporal frame of reference, the contributions in this vol-
ume ideally investigate selected regions and religions from an ethnographic
and historical perspective in order to come to general conclusions about the
dynamics of religion in Southeast Asia. All the contributions were produced
by cultural and social anthropologists who are familiar with Southeast Asia
through extensive fieldwork in at least one of the countries in this region. To
varying degrees they combine ethnographic and theoretical concerns, thus
representing not a single viewpoint, but rather complementary perspectives
on the same area and the same topic, namely the dynamic relationship
between religion and modernity in Southeast Asia.
Despite differences that may exist in detail, all the contributors seek
to determine the impact of religion on modernity and vice versa; that is,
they describe the interaction between religion and modernity and the
consequential transformations of their internal relations. In doing so, they
provide a variety of ethnographic examples which not only claim that
such transformations occur, but paradigmatically describe how they take
place, how religion responds to the challenges of modernity, and how the
interaction between local conditions and global influences is contributing
to the emergence of place and culturally specific formations of religion
and modernity in Southeast Asia. It is in these senses that the volume aims
to add to the current debate on the dynamics of religion and modernity:
it presents ethnographic accounts that convey in detail how people in
Vietnam, Indonesia or Laos are contributing in their different ways to the
formation of modern religions and religious modernities in Southeast Asia.

The volume and its contributions

All the contributions in this book have been subsumed under three thematic
headings. Starting with Modern Spirits, in the first section Peter Brunlein,
Michael Dickhardt, Guido Sprenger and Paul Christensen describe the
revival and revitalization of spirits and spirit worship taking place in many
24  Volker Got towik

parts of Southeast Asia. In contrast to the general assumption that spirits

will perish in the hard light of science and are bound to disappear when
confronted by modernity, they have survived the clash with modernity
in good health, as Peter Brunlein puts it in his synoptic account. Spirits,
possession and trance prevail not only in religion but also in popular culture
and the entertainment industry and are therefore well suited to reflecting
on Southeast Asias multiple modernities.
Ancestor and spirit worship form part of these multiple modernities.
Many Southeast Asian countries are witnessing the revitalization of these
religious practices, which are being transformed and re-interpreted at the
same time. Michael Dickhardt provides a case from Vietnam, where the
socialist reform policy has triggered a complex process in which the role and
place of religion and spirituality in society are being negotiated. Religion
has become part of a modernist state project and at the same time a means
of coping with the impositions of modernity and its uncertainties. The
complex interplay of religious traditions, including spirit and ancestor
worship, with powerful secular ideologies like nationalism, liberalism and
socialism constitute a promising field of research and gives Vietnam a
special position in the comparative framework of inquiry.
Many ethnic groups in Southeast Asia claim parallel structures of
organization for the world of living human beings and the world of spirits
and divinities. The homology of the spirit world and that of the living
comprises markets, goods and money. As Guido Sprenger illustrates with
reference to the Rmeet in upland Laos, ritual money in particular plays
an important role in reproducing socio-cosmic relations and in creating
bonds of affinity between the living and the dead. These parallel structures
constitute relations between market and ritual which take the form of a
commodification of religion and a ritualization of the market to the
benefit of both.
The pressure placed on the interaction between human beings and spirits
in the name of modernity is illustrated with reference to an example from
Indonesia. Paul Christensen gives a lively account of traditional horse
dances ( jathilan), which are performed in the rural parts of central and
eastern Java at weddings, circumcisions and other festive occasions. Local
priests invite spirits not only to join in the performance but to take pos-
session of the entranced dancers. Taking criticism from reformist Muslims
into account, since the 1980s the state has promoted modernized forms of
horse dance without trance and spirit possession to be held in competitions
and festivals. Under the influence of politics and religion, nation-building
and contested interpretations, local ritual practices like the horse dance
Introduc tion 25

are gradually being transformed into profane cultural events which make
the return of modern spirits a subversive act.
The contributions in the first section of this volume refer to the impact
of the economy on religion by emphasizing that histories of religion and the
economy are interwoven. The effect of the spirit of capitalism on spirits
and spirit worship seems to be a distinctively favourable one, resulting in a
spirited modernity which is challenging the dichotomy between religion
and modernity in a specific manner.
As part of the modern world, religion is subject to rationalization pro-
cesses, which, contrary to the assumptions of modernization theories, tend
neither to replace religion nor to make it a private matter, but occur within
religious belief systems in order to purify, reform or modernize them. This
internal rationalization is accompanied by the scripturalization of religious
conceptions and the standardization of ritual practices, which only allow
a coherent dogma and a coherent liturgy to be established both being
central requirements for a modern religion in a modern nation-state.
Continuing with Modern Muslims, in the second section Martin Slama,
Susanne Rodemeier, Melanie Nertz and Thomas Reuter address transfor-
mations not only within Islam but also with regard to Muslim-Christian
relations by referring to Indonesia, the nation with the worlds largest
Muslim population. The attraction of modernity for Islamic groups and
their efforts to reform are discussed as driving forces of transformation by
Martin Slama, taking Al-Irsyad, an Indonesian reformist Islamic organiza-
tion established by Arab migrants from Hadhramaut, as an example. Having
embraced not only the Salafi ethos of a glorious past but also the modern
desire for the new, Al-Irsyad is struggling with the problem of reconciling
the progressive forces of modernity with the call for a return to a distant,
idealized past. Even their concern with modern education and lifestyle,
which once made them confident participants in modern life, could not
prevent them from losing their role as the leading reform movement in
Indonesia to Muhammadiyah and has confronted them with an unsettling
question: how to stay modern?
In order to become or stay modern, local religious practices contested
by reformist Muslims in Java and other parts of Indonesia often show a
flexible response to particular political and religious challenges, as Susanne
Rodemeier demonstrates by referring to Mubeng Beteng, an annual ritual at
the Sultans palace in Yogyakarta. The ritual consists of an anti-clockwise
circumambulation of the palace walls with silent prayers for peace and is
undertaken by the participant to receive a share in the spiritual power of the
palace. However, the volcanic eruption of Mount Merapi and the national
26  Volker Got towik

governments demand for the Sultan of Yogykarta to be democratically

legitimized as governor were perceived as threats to his power. Against this
background, the ritual received a reinterpretation through minor symbolic
changes which transformed the distribution of the palaces spiritual power
into a demonstration of a socially founded political unity.
The complex and ambivalent attitude of Muslims in Indonesia towards
political and religious reform is reflected in Muslim Indonesians percep-
tions of the West as frame of reference for modernity. Based on research
in Makassar and Yogyakarta, Melanie Nertz points out that perceptions of
the West are multilayered, contradictory and contested within Indonesian
society. What is present among Muslims in Makassar and Yogyakarta is
not just one mental world map but a variety of world maps on which the
boundaries between the West and the East are fluid, resulting in a particular
uncertainty over where exactly to locate Indonesia. However, Muslims in
Yogyakarta and Makassar are not engaged in a general antagonism towards
the West but are rather trying to filter out what is considered suitable for In-
donesian culture and Muslim religious understandings in and of modernity.
A similar flexibility towards the West and current political events char-
acterizes the democratic advances in Indonesia since Suhartos downfall in
1998. Referring to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the attack on the World
Trade Center and the War on Terror, Thomas Reuter demonstrates how
these historical events have influenced the struggle between Islamists and
nationalists in Indonesia for moral, cosmological and political supremacy.
However, after the minority view of Islamic hardliners gained currency by
riding on a tide of anti-American popular sentiment, the political atmos-
phere changed and gave rise to the revival of Pancasila and other principles
that Suharto had long sought to discredit. This shift was due to the reverse
impact of domestic terrorism on public sentiment, which made it clear that
terrorism had become a major domestic security issue for Indonesia itself. It
seems likely that terrorism will defeat itself by alienating the increasingly
well-informed public in modern Southeast Asia.
The current popularity of world religions in many parts of Southeast Asia
has to been seen against the background of the historical events mentioned
above. They are spreading at the expense of local religious belief systems,
which are confronted by demands that they undergo similar processes of
rationalization in order to meet the requirements of a modern religion in a
modern nation-state. As far as Indonesia is concerned, only globalized forms
of religion are accepted as religion (agama), local forms (adat) being rejected
and frequently reinterpreted as profane culture or secular tradition to be
promoted as touristic events. Concurrently, boundaries are being erected
Introduc tion 27

between denominations, thus dissolving cross-cutting ties between them in

terms of jointly maintained sacred sites, jointly performed, multi-religious
rituals and other ecumenical practices. The disintegration of local traditions
and ritual practices, however, is anything but irreversible. Frequently their
abandonment, whether due to modernization processes or to pressure
from local governments and political regimes, is perceived as a deficit to
which the respective social groups respond in a variety of ways. However,
attempts to revitalize these traditions can be observed all over Southeast
Asia and point to opposed tendencies. Particularly in times of crisis or
conflict, traditions are revitalized or strengthened in order to emphasize
their supposedly unifying character, resulting in a bipolar confrontation
between adherents of tradition and those of globalization which in the
case of Islam is often called Arabization.
In the final section of this volume, entitled Modern Traditions, Birgit
Bruchler, Volker Gottowik, Annette Hornbacher, Karin Klenke and Judith
Schlehe refer to negotiations of local traditions and their revitalization,
transformation or reinterpretation in order to meet the challenges of
modernity. As a response to violent inter-faith clashes since 1999, Birgit
Bruchler observed a revival of traditions for peace in the Moluccas. A
traditional alliance system (pela) binding different villages together for
mutual aid, irrespective of religious affiliation, and a village federation
(Uli Hatuhaha) which goes back to an event in the mystical past are used
as examples of the revitalization of local traditions. The re-emergence of
alliances and other forms of co-operation is part of a more general trend to
revive and modernize traditions in order re-establish traditional structures
and reintegrate people. These modern traditions are expected to bridge
the religious divide and to contribute to the restoration of civility in the
Moluccas as an essential prerequisite for sustainable peace.
In contrast to the Moluccas and many other parts of Indonesia, on Bali the
era of reformation (reformasi) after the fall of Suharto was not characterized
by violent clashes between different denominations. In order to understand
why, at least in the recent history of Bali, conflicts were not staged and
decided along ethnic or religious lines but rather among the Balinese popula-
tion as a whole, in my own paper I refer to a pair of masked sacred figures
(Barong Landung) representing a Chinese-Indian or Chinese-Balinese
couple as the first ancestors of the local population in Bali. In the course
of the financial and monetary crises that shocked Indonesia at the end of
the last century and provided a pretext for violent assaults on the Chinese
minority in Jakarta and many other cities in Indonesia, the sacred figures
mentioned above were revitalized, reminding the Hindu-Balinese that the
28  Volker Got towik

Chinese were part of both their history and genealogy. In so doing, local
traditions and respected rituals turned out to be flexible instruments with
which to react to modern challenges, thereby contributing to the perception
of Bali as being safe and not only for ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.
Beyond the revitalization of local traditions and practices in times
of crisis, adat- and agama-based traditions are being negotiated within
the Hindu-Balinese religion. What appears at first sight as a simple shift
from Balis traditional orthopraxy to a Hindu orthodoxy is rather a clash
of Hindu doctrine and traditional Balinese ritual, with the particular re-
ligious dynamics that emerge from it. Using the Balinese cremation ritual
(ngaben) as a paradigm and touchstone for opposing interpretations of
Hinduism within Balinese culture, Annette Hornbachers focus is on how
the programme of a Hindu orthodoxy is being adopted or rejected by local
practitioners. Contrary to the assumption that a local orthopraxy is being
smoothly replaced by Hinduism as a formally coherent world religion or
orthodoxy, the deliberate defense of Balis ritual aesthetics and dramaturgy,
connected with a subversive adoption of the modernist Hindu doctrines
and its principles, is highlighted in this contribution.
Another example of negotiations of modernity and tradition within
a particular culture comes from the Karo of northern Sumatra, where,
under the influence of the Protestant church, local traditions are being
modernized. In particular, Karo Batak women perceive modernity not as a
threat to culture and tradition, but, as Karin Klenke illustrates, as a positive
process bringing about development and rationality. The Christian faith is
perceived as a prerequisite and constitutive factor of local modernity and
provides a space in which to negotiate acceptable articulations of a modern
lifestyle, among them fashion and proper ways of presenting the female
body. Christianity is embraced by Karo women, since it provides powerful
arguments against the superior position of men and contests the uneven
and gender-biased distribution of moral responsibility in Karo society.
New traditions were established in the Minahasa, a region in North
Sulawesi dominated by Christians, when a pilgrimage site was created
to celebrate the freedom from conflict in this area and to manifest the
equality of the officially recognized religions in Indonesia. A Catholic and
a Protestant church, a Hindu and a Buddhist temple and a mosque were
built next to each other in 2002, and despite the fact that Confucianism was
excluded, Bukit Kasih, as this site is called, became a symbol of religious
and cultural pluralism in Indonesia. However, since no services, religious
ceremonies or rituals are held on this site, Judith Schlehe points out that
there are no encounters or exchanges between the adherents of the different
Introduc tion 29

denominations. Apparently, the emphasis is on recreation, not religion,

meaning that multi-religiosity functions merely as decorative scenery for
leisure activities. Since Bukit Kasih is also a place of supernatural powers
where people perform rituals unofficially, it triggers disputes about what
is religiously or only culturally acceptable. However, with regard to future
possibilities, Bukit Kasih could provide a liminal space for overcoming the
boundaries between different denominations.
The contributions to the third section of this volume illustrate how local
traditions are being produced and transformed, revitalized and defended, in
the process of becoming or staying modern. They therefore remind us that
invented traditions also characterize modern societies and that modernity
is probably the most successful of these inventions, as it provides the basis
for the Western imagination that it is a cultural, religious and political unit
(cf. Hobsbawn 1983: 5; cf. also Houben & Schrempf 2008: 11).
However, since at least the confrontation with postmodern theses at
the end of the last century, modernity as a process of rationalization and
secularization appears to be oddly exhausted. The will to be modern seems
hesitant, sometimes even outmoded, as Bruno Latour stated (1998 [1991]: 18),
who then raises the following question: Why are so many of our contempo-
raries reluctant to use this adjective today ()? (ibid: 19; authors translation).
Apparently, the claim to be modern has worn away and does not conform
to the Zeitgeist anymore. The dialectic of enlightenment, which could
also be described as a dialectic of secularization, is obviously producing
deficiencies which, at least in part, are being compensated by religion.
The dialectic addressed here ultimately provoked the question whether we
need a second modernity, a modernization of modernity, which, in the
sense of a reflexive modernization, would be able to process or rescue the
unintended and problematic side effects of the first modernization (cf. Beck
et al. 1998: 9f.). At the same time, there is a suspicion that, as the unabated
attraction of religion seems to suggest, we have possibly never been modern
(cf. Latour 1998 [1991]: 18). However, when religion and modernity are not
conceived as being in contradiction, the concurrency of secularization and
sacralization sheds its irritating substance. By referring to this point, the
contributions to this volume hopefully provide an answer to the question
of whether modernity is still ahead of us or already behind us.