Religion and Social Change

Sorcery and social change

by Rena Lederman

Women's Shi῾i Ma᾿atim in Bahrain

by Sophia Pandya

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 31-58

In this study I examine the evolving function of the ma᾿tam (pl. ma᾿atim), or Shi῾i religious center, in Bahraini... more In this study I examine the evolving function of the ma᾿tam (pl. ma᾿atim), or Shi῾i religious center, in Bahraini Shi῾i women's lives. The role of the ma᾿tam has changed in Bahraini society, especially in the case of women's ma᾿atim. While men's ma᾿atim have always been sites of political relevance, according to the women I interviewed it is only in the last few decades that women have used their ma᾿atim for purposes other than religious and social. In the past, Bahraini Shi῾i women used this space to grieve the martyrdom of figures from Shi῾i sacred history. Now they have begun to employ it for secular education of all kinds—legal, social, health—and even for political purposes. I focus on the ways in which education, and the Shi῾i Islamic resurgences that took place in Iran and Iraq, influenced Bahraini Shi῾i women in their interpretation of religion and their uses of religious space

redistributions du travail funéraire et transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre dans le Bénin méridional

by Joël Noret

forthcoming in Hervé Guy (ed.), Rencontre autour du cadavre, 2012.

Cet article entend montrer combien les transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre dans le Bénin méridional... more Cet article entend montrer combien les transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre dans le Bénin méridional s’avèrent révélatrices d’évolutions plus générales dans l’ordre de la prise en charge de la mort et, finalement, puisque les deux sont toujours peu ou prou liés, dans l’organisation des rapports sociaux. À cet égard, envisager le changement social, en prenant pour point de départ les transformations de la chaîne opératoire du cadavre, peut d’ailleurs s’avérer une entrée épistémologique féconde, car, si le corps est bien ce « premier lieu du social », pour reprendre l’heureuse formule de Gil Bartholeyns , le cadavre peut légitimement être considéré comme un double particulièrement éloquent de celui-ci, relevant, comme lui, à la fois pleinement du biologique et du social, et de leurs nouages complexes.
Plus spécifiquement, dans la sociologie historique du cadavre que je propose dans les pages qui suivent, je partirai de deux ressorts de la transformation de l’apprêt des corps, qui me sont apparus comme majeurs, au cours de mes enquêtes sur les funérailles dans le Bénin méridional. Ainsi, j’évoquerai, dans un premier temps, les effets du changement religieux sur le traitement des cadavres, dont une proportion croissante échappe désormais aux mains des spécialistes « traditionnels » de la gestion des corps. Dans un deuxième temps, je montrerai la place occupée dorénavant par les morgues dans la prise en charge de la mort et les déplacements significatifs que cette innovation technologique a contribué à diffuser dans la chaîne opératoire du cadavre.

Rethinking Development: Religious Tourism as Material and Cultural Revitalization in Pietrelcina, Italy

by Michael Di Giovine

published in "Tourism: An International Interdisciplinary Journal." Vol. 58, No. 3, November 2010, pp. 271-288.

This article re-conceptualizes processes whereby religious tourism is adopted to generate socio-cultural... more This article re-conceptualizes processes whereby religious tourism is adopted to generate socio-cultural "betterment" in small-scale societies by presenting an in-depth case study of the Southern Italian village of Pietrelcina, the birthplace of recently canonized St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. "Tourism development" has long been considered central for economic development, employment, and poverty alleviation; it has also been criticized as fostering neocolonialism, inauthenticity and museumifi cation. Arguing that the pervasive "development
paradigm" creates a tautology whereby outside forces create and attempt to alleviate local tensions between maintaining tradition and transformation, the paper argues that such initiatives be organic and focused on tourism's potentialities and intangible effects; anadaptation of Anthony Wallace's classic anthropological model of revitalization movements is then proposed. In contrast to the "development paradigm's" linear, top-down, and antiorganic approach, a revitalization movement posits society as a life-cycle, wherein members organically look to past practices to resolve present problems. Drawing on data collected over more than two years of fieldwork, the paper presents an ethnographic analysis of the variety of responses by Pietrelcina's locals and site managers to tourism's revitalizing potential, ultimately urging practitioners and researchers alike to consider revitalization theory as a model for sustainable tourism development.

Keywords:
tourism; development;, revitalization; pilgrimage; Pietrelcina; Padre Pio; Italy

(2009) The Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia—Paradigmatic Change in Regional Perspective

by Thomas David DuBois

This is the introductory chapter to the edited volume _Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia_ (Palgrave 2009). This essay explores some of the ideas that run through the ten content chapters:

Introduction: The Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia—Paradigmatic Change in Regional Perspective: Thomas DuBois

Part I Orientalism and the Western Recasting of Buddhism
1. From Thathanadaw to Therav̄ada Buddhism: Constructions of Religion and Religious Identity in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Myanmar: Alexey Kirichenko
2. Publishing Eastern Buddhism: D. T. Suzuki’s Journey to the West: Judith Snodgrass

Part II Mission and Meaning in Christianity
3. The Education of Annie Howe: Missionary Transformations in late Meiji Japan: Roberta Wollons
4. Idols and Art: Missionary Attitudes toward Indigenous Worship and the Material Culture on Nias, Indonesia, 1904–1920: Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz
5. The Virgin Heads South: Northern Catholic Refugees and their Clergy in South Vietnam, 1954–1964: Peter Hansen

Part III State and Religious Ethnicity
6. The Making of Islamic Law: Local Elites and Colonial Authority in British Malaya: Iza Hussin
7. Christian Conversion and Ethnic Identity in East Kalimantan: Jennifer Connolly
8. Recasting Religion and Ethnicity: Tourism and Socialism in Northern Sichuan, 1992–2005: Donald S. Sutton and Xiaofei Kang

Part IV New Media and New Religion
9. Japanese Print Media and Manchurian Cultural Community: Religion in the Pages of the Shengjing Times, 1906–1944: Thomas DuBois
10. Showing Faith: Exhibiting Omoto to Consumers in Early-Twentieth-Century Japan: Nancy Stalker

Afterword: Questioning Faiths? Casting Doubts: Oscar Salemink

(2008) Manchukuo’s filial sons: States, sects and the transformation of graveside piety

by Thomas David DuBois

East Asian History, 36

This article shows how the popular custom of keeping vigil at the grave of a deceased parent took root in Manchuria, and why different governments either supported, suppressed or ignored these "filial tombs."

For this research, I had to go tramping around rural Jilin at 30 degrees below zero, but I think the final product made all the freezing worthwhile!

NEW! (2011) Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia - book introduction

by Thomas David DuBois

Cambridge University Press, 2011


From the back cover: Religious ideas and actors have shaped Asian... more Cambridge University Press, 2011


From the back cover: Religious ideas and actors have shaped Asian cultural practices for millennia, and have played a decisive role in charting the course of its history. In this engaging and informative book, Thomas David DuBois sets out to explain how religion has influenced the political, social, and economic transformation of Asia from the fourteenth century to the present day. Crossing a broad terrain from Tokyo to Tibet, the book highlights long-term trends and key moments, such as the expulsion of Catholic missionaries from Japan, or the Taiping Rebellion in China, when religion dramatically transformed the political fate of a nation. Contemporary chapters reflect on the wartime deification of the Japanese emperor, Marxism as religion, the persecution of the Dalai Lama, and the fate of Asian religion in a globalized world.

For a more complete description of the book, see the Cambridge University Press site at

< http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6035468 >

Re-Presenting a Contemporary Saint: Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

by Michael Di Giovine

published in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35 (Spring 2009), pp. 481-492

The cult of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, a twentieth-century Capuchin monk and stigmatic who has become one of the... more The cult of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, a twentieth-century Capuchin monk and stigmatic who has become one of the world's most popular contemporary Catholic saints, reveals competing ways of perceiving and re-presenting sainthood.

In the Absence of Elders: Chaos and Moral Order in the Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge

by Eve Zucker

Book Chapter in 'People of Virtue: reconfiguring religion, power and moral order in Cambodia" Edited By Alexandra Kent and David Chandler

Transcending Time and Terror: The Re-emergence of Bon Dalien after Pol Pot and Thirty Years of Civil War

by Eve Zucker

Published in 'The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies', 2006

This article is concerned with social and moral cohesion in the wake of war and violence. In the Cambodian village of... more This article is concerned with social and moral cohesion in the wake of war and violence. In the Cambodian village of O’Thmaa, villagers are making tentative and at times ambiguous efforts to connect to their pre-Khmer Rouge past to recreate a sense of community and moral order. This article examines this process through a detailed ethnographic description and analysis of the production of O’Thmaa’s harvest ritual and festival, Bon Dalien.

Matters of Morality: the case of a former Khmer Rouge village chief

by Eve Zucker

Published in 'Anthropology and Humanism' 2009

In a Khmer village located in Cambodia’s southwest, an elderly man is blamed for the executions of his neighbors and... more In a Khmer village located in Cambodia’s southwest, an elderly man is blamed for the executions of his neighbors and extended kin. He is said to have killed these people when he worked as the village chief under the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s. Using interviews and conversations with this man and others in his
community, as well as observations and archival research, I speculatively examine villagers’ accounts of the morality of his actions as a former Khmer Rouge village chief.

Memory and (re)making moral order in the aftermath of violence in a Highland Khmer village in Cambodia

by Eve Zucker

Dissertation

This research is about how moral order is (re)made in the wake of cataclysmic violence and dislocation in a village in... more This research is about how moral order is (re)made in the wake of cataclysmic violence and dislocation in a village in Cambodia’s Southwest. The village locale has been a Khmer Rouge base and battlefield for nearly 30 years between 1970 and 1998. The study, based on fieldwork carried out in 2001-2003, draws together the themes of relatedness, morality and memory to examine the consequences of the violence of the past on present day relations and practices. More precisely, I argue that the experiences of the village in the early days of the revolution, when villagers turned on each other, not only had a devastating impact on the social and moral order at the time they occurred but continue to impair the remaking of moral order today and has impacts on responses to other social changes occurring in recent years.

The thesis includes an analysis of both the memory of the violence of the past, including its moral dimensions and relations to other pasts, and an analysis of the means by which relatedness and moral order is re-established through trust, kinship, commensality, shared stories, and village rituals. It also includes a comparison with villages in the neighbouring commune that suffered similar but not identical experiences, arguing that these differing experiences shape present ways of healing and making the future. By addressing these issues, this dissertation will provide a unique case study that contributes to the anthropology of post-violence memory and recovery and the emerging anthropology of morality, as well as make an ethnographic contribution to Cambodian studies.