Animism in Southeast Asia

Animism in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Kaj Arhem
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317336623
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.

Animism in Southeast Asia

Animism in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Kaj Arhem
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317336623
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.

Christianity and Animism in Melanesia

Christianity and Animism in Melanesia PDF Author: Kenneth Nehrbass
Publisher: William Carey Library Publishers
ISBN: 9780878084074
Category : Animism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this book, Kenneth Nehrbass examines the interaction between traditional or animistic religion (called kastom) and Christianity in Vanuatu. First, he briefly outlines major anthropological theories of animism, then he examines eight aspects of animism on Tanna Island and shows how they present a challenge to Christianity. He traces the history of Christianity on Tanna from 1839 to the present, showing which missiological theories the various missionaries were implementing. Nehrbass wanted to find out what experiences in the lives of the islanders distinguished those who left traditional religion behind from those who held on to it. In the end, he contends that there are twenty factors of gospel response and cultural integration that determine whether an animistic background believer will be a mixer, separator, transplanter, or contextualizer.

Animism of the Nilotics and Discourses of Islamic Fundamentalism in Sudan

Animism of the Nilotics and Discourses of Islamic Fundamentalism in Sudan PDF Author: Kuel Maluil Jok
Publisher: Sidestone Press
ISBN: 908890054X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Animism as a religion and a culture of the Nilotic peoples of the Upper River Nile in modern "Southern Sudan". It gives an account of how the animistic ritual performances of the divine chief-priests are strategies in conflict management and resolution. For centuries, the Nilotic peoples have been resisting changes to new religious identities and conservatively remained Animists. Their current interactions with the external world, however, have transformed their religious identities. At present, the Nilotics are Animist-Christians or Animist-Muslims. This does not mean that the converted Nilotics relinquish Animism and become completely assimilated to the new religious prophetic dogmas, instead, they develop compatible religious practices of Animism, Christianity and Islam. New Islamic fundamentalism in Sudan which is sweeping Africa into Islamic religious orthodoxy, where Sharia (Islamic law) is the law of the land, rejects this compatibility and categorises the Nilotics as "heathens" and "apostates". Such characterisation engenders opposing religious categories, with one side urging Sharia and the other for what this study calls "gradable" culture. Kuel Jok is a researcher at the Department of World Cultures at the University of Helsinki. In Sudan, Jok obtained a degree in English Linguistics and Literature and diplomas in Philosophy and Translation. He also studied International Law in Egypt. In Europe, Jok acquired an MA in Sociology from the University of Joensuu, Finland and a PhD in the same field from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

The Indianized States of Southeast Asia

The Indianized States of Southeast Asia PDF Author: George Coedès
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824803681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Traces the story of India's expansion that is woven into the culture of Southeast Asia.

Personal Religion and Magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi

Personal Religion and Magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi PDF Author: C.W. Buijs
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900432657X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
In Personal Religion and Magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi, Kees Buijs describes the traditional culture of the Toraja’s, which is rapidly vanishing. The focus is on personal religion as it has its centre in the kitchen of each house. In the kitchen and also by the use of magical words and stones the gods are sought for their powers of blessing. This book adds important information to Buijs’ earlier Powers of Blessing from the Wilderness and from Heaven (Brill, 2006).

Animism

Animism PDF Author: Graham Harvey
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231137003
Category : Animism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements of their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In his new book, Graham Harvey explores indigenous and environmentalist spiritualities in which people celebrate relationships with other-than-human beings. He examines present and past animistic beliefs and practices of the Ojibwe, the Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans, revealing the diverse ways of being animist and of living respectfully within natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of animist worldviews and lifeways. He argues that animist beliefs can contribute significantly to contemporary debates about consciousness, cosmology, and environmentalism. In addition, he examines the colonialist ideologies and methodologies that have caused many academics to exclude the term "animism" from their critical vocabularies.

The Making of Southeast Asia

The Making of Southeast Asia PDF Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801466342
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins and evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism and international relations. He views the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "from the bottom up" as not only a U.S.-inspired ally in the Cold War struggle against communism but also an organization that reflects indigenous traditions. Although Acharya deploys the notion of "imagined community" to examine the changes, especially since the Cold War, in the significance of ASEAN dealings for a regional identity, he insists that "imagination" is itself not a neutral but rather a culturally variable concept. The regional imagination in Southeast Asia imagines a community of nations different from NAFTA or NATO, the OAU, or the European Union. In this new edition of a book first published as The Quest for Identity in 2000, Acharya updates developments in the region through the first decade of the new century: the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1997, security affairs after September 2001, the long-term impact of the 2004 tsunami, and the substantial changes wrought by the rise of China as a regional and global actor. Acharya argues in this important book for the crucial importance of regionalism in a different part of the world.

Alluring Monsters

Alluring Monsters PDF Author: Rosalind Galt
Publisher: Film and Culture Series
ISBN: 9780231201339
Category : Decolonization
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The pontianak, a terrifying female vampire ghost, is a powerful figure in Malay cultures. Exploring how and why the pontianak found new life in postcolonial Southeast Asian film and society, Rosalind Galt reveals the importance of cinema to histories and theories of decolonization.

Buddhism: Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia

Buddhism: Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia PDF Author: Paul Williams
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415332330
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This eight-volume set brings together seminal papers in Buddhist studies from a vast range of academic disciplines published over the last forty years. With a new introduction by the editor, this collection is a unique and unrivalled research resource for both student and scholar. Coverage includes: - Buddhist origins; early history of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia - early Buddhist Schools and Doctrinal History; Theravada Doctrine - the Origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism; some Mahayana religious topics - Abhidharma and Madhyamaka - Yogacara, the Epistemological tradition, and Tathagatagarbha - Tantric Buddhism (Including China and Japan); Buddhism in Nepal and Tibet - Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, and - Buddhism in China, East Asia, and Japan.

Beyond Nature and Culture

Beyond Nature and Culture PDF Author: Philippe Descola
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022614500X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
“Gives to anthropological reflection a new starting point and will become the compulsory reference for all our debates in the years to come.” —Claude Lévi-Strauss, on the French edition Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Philippe Descola shows this essential difference to be not only a Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies” —animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh. “A compelling and original account of where the nature-culture binary has come from, where it might go—and what we might imagine in its place.” —Somatosphere “The most important book coming from French anthropology since Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Anthropologie Structurale.” —Bruno Latour, author of An Inquiry into Modes of Existence “Descola’s challenging new worldview should be of special interest to a wide range of scientific and academic disciplines from anthropology to zoology . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice