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Reviewed by:
  • Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia
  • Jacob Ramsay
Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia. Edited by Andrew C. Wilford and Kenneth M. George. Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2005. Softcover: 210pp.

Contrary to common predictions, religious expression in public life over recent decades has not declined in response to the dual processes of nation-building and modernization in Southeast Asia but instead has grown in importance. The shortcomings of the "secularization" thesis have become increasingly remarkable in recent years as seen in numerous examples of religious resurgence across the region, such as the rise in Singapore of evangelical Christianity, or the unbridled popularity of spirit-mediums and spiritual pilgrimage in Vietnam — two countries where the state has long dominated public discourse on modernization and economic development. While the field is crowded with studies on politicized religion — notably political analyses of fundamentalist-militant Islam — the arrival of this volume of eight essays by anthropologists and historians on popular spirituality and its varied interactions with the nation-state is very welcome.

Guiding several of the volume's essays is the question: "In what ways do religious practices and debates provide people with room for maneuver amid the shadows and light of the nation-state?" (p. 11). Another question might well be "To what extent has popular religiosity impacted on grassroots political change?" Smita Lahiri's essay on the Philippines' popular folk-Catholic pilgrimage destination, Mt. Banahaw, highlights the site's growing significance for politicians and presidential hopefuls in the race to attract support among the rural and urban poor who support a cult surrounding a priestess, Suprema Isabel Suarez, based near the mountain. Only for local politicians, visits such as by Congressman Jose De Venecia prior to the 1998 elections, are taken as an act of homage deference to Suarez herself. In a somewhat similar fashion, Thamora Fishel follows the tireless attendance of local politicians to a succession of funerals in Southern Thailand. "Funerals provide politicians", as Fishel explains, "with far more than an opportunity to be visible to a large gathering of people". They are opporunities to "make merit and build or maintain patronage relationships" (p. 145). Again, the relationship between politicians and their constituents and supporters is blurred: in the process of campaigning and making merit with bereaved families, politicians are obliged to contribute to funeral costs, and attendance is all but compulsory at the cremation ceremonies of high-status community members. These two papers also quite skilfully touch on [End Page 171] the growing class divide between the religious tastes and sensibilities of metropolitan middle-class and those living in rural areas and regional towns.

One recurring theme in the volume is the pressure of religious change on reform within the state itself, on its ideologies and social policies. Suzanne Brenner's study of gender politics explores the controversies which animated debate between proponents of conservative and official values and liberal Muslim activists in 1980s and 1990s Indonesia. She traces the roots of certain gender ideologies to the development and pro-capitalist intiatives underlying Suharto-era policies. While these policies prescribed "traditional" roles for women in the home, they also promoted greater female participation in the workforce. Opportunities in education and work exposed women to global feminism, fuelled middle-class lifestyles and in the process led many to challenge the socially conservative basis of official gender values and norms. Similarly, Andrew Abalahin recounts the long-running battle of an ethnic Chinese couple in Indonesia to have their Confucian wedding rites recognized by the state. Their efforts to have their Confucian identity recognized as legitimate under the Pancasila code exposes the messy contradictions in the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and national identity. Such perspectives illustrate the ways in which government planning on social and cultural cohesion is often frustrated and sometimes reversed with the very instruments developed to create idealized hierarchies and social order.

This volume offers a wide variety of social and historical case studies which will greatly appeal to anthropologists and scholars of popular religion in Southeast Asia. Undoubtedly the work's greatest strength is the breadth of scope and the ethnographic detail in several...

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