Events

Jointly organized by Religion and Globalisation Cluster and Indonesia Study Group of Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Kenneth Dean, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

What is the problem that the word “pluralism” names? Like many other post-colonial societies, Indonesia exemplifies the promises and challenges of a state that lacks the supposition of a primordial nationality to stand on—a plurality out of which unity must be projected into the future. Plural-ism, then, is a value accorded to plurality, in effect, after the fact, as seen from the point of view of that unity. If the post-colonial nation seems to be cobbled together from discrete bits and pieces, this is only a variation on a more general problem. Although population flows and national sovereignties are global phenomena, they are experienced locally. “Plurality” as a state of affairs (if not “pluralism” as a normative value) isn’t an alien condition, something that comes from elsewhere or that is just arriving in this present moment. If ethnography today teaches us anything, it’s that plurality is already immanent in the basic conditions of social co-existence. If we are to understand the political and religious challenges of plurality, and not too hastily identify them with modernity, liberalism, or the secular, we should be sniffing out those traces of plurality in their natural habitats. This talk reviews some recent ethnographies of Indonesia to explore how people experience in Sumatra, Java, and Riau respond to plurality in everyday life. Starting with the idea of ethical stance, it looks at traditions of merantau (circular migration), more recent forms of labor diaspora, and the idea of “home”.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. His primary fieldwork has been on Sumba (Indonesia), but he has also written on such topics as Indonesian language politics, Neolithic sacrifice, and Orthodox icons. Keane has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at the LSE, Cambridge, Oslo, and the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell, and has delivered the Westermarck Lecture (Helsinki), theSharpe Lecture (Chicago), the Weiner Lecture (NYU), the Munro Lecture (Edinburgh), and the Rappaport Lecture (Society for the Anthropology of Religion). His books include Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (2016), Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (2007), and Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society (1997).

REGISTRATION

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