[Asia_news] Seminar:Emblematic Lives of Cosmopolitan Pluralists: Sketching the Social Context of Indonesia's Sufi Revival [Monday 16 October - Julia Howell]

[APSS - Asia Pacific Seminar Series]

Dear all,

Asia Pacific Seminar Series (APSS) at UNSW at ADFA will be held on Mondays at
12:10-13:00 in Room SL1 (upstairs), Building 21 at UNSW at ADFA, Northcott
Drive, Canberra. Map/Venue: http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/images/adfamap.pdf

16 October 2006
Emblematic Lives of Cosmopolitan Pluralists: Sketching the Social Context of
Indonesia's Sufi Revival

By Associate Professor Julia Howell
Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University (Nathan)

Abstract
Contemplating the failure of the 'secularisation hypothesis' and the
preponderance of 'fundamentalist' religious movements at the end of the
twentieth century, Peter Berger (1999) suggested that there are just two
social niches in which liberal forms of religion are now dominant: Western
Europe and a globalized elite subculture. Like Ernest Gellner, he was
pessimistic about the capacity of the Islamic tradition to produce movements
genuinely supportive of modernising social change (such as positive
attitudes towards pluralism, independent attitudes towards authority, and a
thorough-going egalitarianism in gender relations). 

This paper calls attention to reasons for moderating such pessimism.
Examining three emblematic spiritual life histories of members of
Indonesia's emergent new middle class, it reveals the importance of
cosmopolitan life experiences, newly available to large numbers of people
from 'strict' Muslim backgrounds, in developing critical attitudes to
religious authority and a kind of 'seeker' orientation similar to that of
Westerners who have resisted both religious fundamentalism and wholly
'disenchanted' lives. The pervasiveness of such cosmopolitan life
experiences amongst Indonesia's modernising elites helps to explain their
new receptiveness to once denigrated Sufi experiential religiosity in
various renovated forms in contemporary urban settings.

***Next Seminars***
23 October 2006
Language Shift and Language Choice in a Chinese-Indonesian Family By
Francisca Handoko, PhD candidate, RSPAS, Australian National University

30 October 2006
Literary Links: Australia and the Asia-Pacific By Professor Bruce Bennett
Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW at ADFA

For the abstracts of the seminars please visit our website:
http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/hass/APSS/Apss.html

Suggestions: 
The Asia-Pacific Seminar convenors welcome suggestions for seminar speakers
and topics. Please contact 2006 convenors:
Minako Sakai (m.sakai at adfa.edu.au), Glenn Banks (glenn.banks at adfa.edu.au),
Paul Tickell (p.tickell at adfa.edu.au)

Enquiries: Taufiq Tanasaldy (apss at adfa.edu.au), tel. (02) 6268 8914
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