[Anthropgrad] Anthropology seminar: Wednesday 17 September

[Melinda Hinkson]

Anthropology seminar, 9.30am Wednesday 17 September, Coombs Seminar Room A

Phil Winn, Archaeology & Anthropology, ANU
 
Divine concrete and the post-secular: local mosques and translocal Muslim
modernities.
 
At the site of my original fieldwork in the Banda Islands of central Maluku,
Indonesia, it was widely suggested that the ornament atop the dome of some
local mosques could become invisible as a sign of a mystical attack or other
threat. During a trip to Maluku earlier this year my enduring puzzlement
about these claims was addressed when I attended a ceremony known as
Œerecting the alif pillar¹, linked to the rebuilding of a village mosque.
 
This paper, a work-in-progress, begins by providing an interpretation of the
disappearing dome ornament in relation to the insights provided by that
ceremony. I argue that the scenario illustrates important aspects of the
character of religion among Muslims in this locale.
 
With these in mind, the paper then engages analytical approaches to
secularisation in the ŒMuslim world¹, and in particular, Indonesia.  This
includes a re-appraisal of Robert Hefner¹s idea of Œsoft¹ secularisation,
and a consideration of the application of Habermas¹s more recent notion of
the Œpost-secular¹.
 
Against this background the paper concludes by exploring aspects of the
presence and influence in this same locale of Jemaah Tabligh, a
transnational Muslim movement with roots in South Asia (better known outside
Indonesia as Tablighi Jama¹at). I suggest that involvement in the movement
cannot be understood in singular terms, and nor can its local effects. Both
form part of a diverse range of political-theological modernities shaping
the social fields in which the discourse of Œbeing Muslim¹ forms a key
dimension of identification and sociality, as much as it shapes religious
and ritual practice.
 
All Welcome.
 

____________________________________
Melinda Hinkson
School of Archaeology & Anthropology
A.D. Hope Building
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200

T: +61 2 6125 8246
F: +61 2 6125 2711
W: http://arts.anu.edu.au/AandA/

Information about the Master of Visual Culture Research
is available at: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/vcr.php