In 1925 the influential Dutch anthropologist W. H. Rassers posed the question of the relationship of myth to ritual, taking as his case study the Javanese myth of the birth of the man-eating demon, Kala. The light shed by this myth, and its re-enactment, on the social morphology of Java was immediately the subject of debate among students of Javanese culture. Stephen C. Headley translates and studies ritual and myth in their variant forms. He expands illuminatingly upon Rasser's general proposition, that the movement from cosmogony to exorcism founds fundamental social forms within which values circulate in Javanese society. Richly detailed descriptions confirm the permanence of these networks of circulating values in modern-day Java, and their persistence in the face of contemporary individualism.

'This book gives the reader much food for thought, not only about Javanese mythology, the wayang, and cosmology, but also about what it is to be a Javanese person within a cosmos so construed.' -Moussons'Interesting reading... the author is well equipped to carry out this task, having an unusual and impressive command of the literature. His tour through the mythological background is intriguing and insightful... many suggestive leads and fascinating links between mythology, kinship, and ritual... From Cosmogony to Exorcism offers an analysis in the structuralist mode and it makes a brilliant contribution to this tradition.' -AnthroposStephen Headley translates and studies a Javanese ritual and myth, the birth of the man-eating demon, Kala. He shows that this genesis myth, with its movement from cosmogony to exorcism, constitutes the basis of networks of circulating values in contemporary Javanese society.

Exploring the phenomenon of socio-religio-magico reality in Java called wong pinter, this study is a pioneering academic work based on a first hand data. By interviewing 108 practitioners within the framework of anthropological and ethnographical approaches and putting the discussions in the context of shamanism study, this work is also a unique inquiry on Javanese culture conducted by a native. Wong Pinter delineates significant connectivity between Javanese shamanism and Asian or Southeast Asian shamanism. It also describes various aspect of shamanism practices in Java and assesses the sustainability and challenges of this phenomenon vis-a-vis the suppression of religious and political establishment. Above all, this book is an outstanding report valuable to those who are interested to delve into the core of Javanese culture and to the deliberation of social science in general.

Stephen Headley's new book explores contemporary religious change in the Surakarta region of Central Java. In his analysis of the Durga ritual complex, the author sheds light on one of the most unusual court traditions to have survived in an era of deepening Islamisation.

Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia examines the conditions facilitating democracy, women’s rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. The book shows that Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have coevolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging. Following thirty-two years of authoritarian rule, in 1998 this sprawling Southeast Asian country returned to electoral democracy. The achievement brought with it, however, an upsurge in both the numbers and assertiveness of Islamist militias, as well as a sharp increase in violence against religious minorities. The resulting mobilizations have pitted the Muslim supporters of an Indonesian variety of inclusive citizenship against populist proponents of Islamist majoritarianism. Seen from this historical example, the book demonstrates that Muslim actors come to know and practice Islam in a manner not determined in an unchanging way by scriptural commands but in coevolution with broader currents in politics, society, and citizen belonging. By exploring these questions in both an Indonesian and comparative context, this book offers important lessons on the challenge of democracy and inclusive citizenship in the Muslim-majority world. Well-written and informative, this book will be suitable for adoption in university courses on Islam, Southeast Asian Politics, Indonesian and Asian studies, as well as courses dealing with religion, democracy, and citizen belonging in multicultural societies around the world. The book will be of interest to the general reader with an interest in Islam, citizenship, and democracy.

Anthropologists have expressed wariness about the concept of evil even in discussions of morality and ethics, in part because the concept carries its own cultural baggage and theological implications in Euro-American societies. Addressing the problem of evil as a distinctly human phenomenon and a category of ethnographic analysis, this volume shows the usefulness of engaging evil as a descriptor of empirical reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence.

Javanese literature is one of the world’s richest and most unusual literary traditions yet it is little known today outside of Java, Indonesia, and a handful of western universities. With its more than a millennium of documented history, its complex interactions over the centuries with literature written in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Malay and Dutch, its often symbiotic relationship with the performing arts of puppetry and dance, and its own immense creativity and insight, this vastly understudied literature offers a lens to understanding Java’s fascinating world as well as human ingenuity more broadly. The essays in this volume, Storied Island: New Explorations in Javanese Literature, take a fresh look at questions and themes pertaining to Java’s literature, employing new theoretical and methodological lenses.

This volume provides an ethnographic description of Muslim merit-making rhetoric, rituals and rationales in Thailand’s Malay far-south. This study is situated in Cabetigo, one of Pattani’s oldest and most important Malay communities that has been subjected to a range of Thai and Islamic influences over the last hundred years. The volume describes religious rhetoric related to merit-making being conducted in both Thai and Malay, that the spiritual currency of merit is generated through the performance of locally occurring Malay adat, and globally normative amal 'ibadat. Concerning the rationale for merit-making, merit-makers are motivated by both a desire to ensure their own comfort in the grave and personal vindication at judgment, as well as to transfer merit for those already in the grave, who are known to the merit-maker. While the rhetoric elements of Muslim merit-making reveal Thai influence, its ritual elements confirm the local impact of reformist activism.

In The Encoded Cirebon Mask: Materiality, Flow, and Meaning along Java’s Islamic Northwest Coast, Laurie Margot Ross situates masks and masked dancing in the Cirebon region of Java (Indonesia) as an original expression of Islam. This is a different view from that of many scholars, who argue that canonical prohibitions on fashioning idols and imagery prove that masks are mere relics of indigenous beliefs that Muslim travelers could not eradicate. Making use of archives, oral histories, and the performing objects themselves, Ross traces the mask’s trajectory from a popular entertainment in Cirebon—once a portal of global exchange—to a stimulus for establishing a deeper connection to God in late colonial Java, and eventual links to nationalism in post-independence Indonesia.

In its attempt to squash the influence of animism and pantheism or polytheism and to promote the idea of the One and Only Absolute God, Islam has come up against a tendency within itself to incorporate certain local religious traditions and practices. This book shares that combination of universality and local particularity, exploring this paradox and the contradictory tendencies contained in it.