Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission EncounterAcross much of the postcolonial world, Christianity has often become inseparable from ideas and practices linking the concept of modernity to that of human emancipation. To explore these links, Webb Keane undertakes a rich ethnographic study of the century-long encounter, from the colonial Dutch East Indies to post-independence Indonesia, among Calvinist missionaries, their converts, and those who resist conversion. Keane's analysis of their struggles over such things as prayers, offerings, and the value of money challenges familiar notions about agency. Through its exploration of language, materiality, and morality, this book illuminates a wide range of debates in social and cultural theory. It demonstrates the crucial place of Christianity in semiotic ideologies of modernity and sheds new light on the importance of religion in colonial and postcolonial histories. |
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Page 4
... produce. If there is any shared ground between Protestant and more secular traditions, it should be most apparent when both stand in a situation of maximum difference from something else. The colonial encounter offers such a situation ...
... produce. If there is any shared ground between Protestant and more secular traditions, it should be most apparent when both stand in a situation of maximum difference from something else. The colonial encounter offers such a situation ...
Page 11
... produce. Representations, in this account, involve a distinction between model and reality, such as a panorama and ... produces the effect of there being a world of objects that exist external to it, and of subjects that stand outside ...
... produce. Representations, in this account, involve a distinction between model and reality, such as a panorama and ... produces the effect of there being a world of objects that exist external to it, and of subjects that stand outside ...
Page 12
... produce them . And yet in certain respects it remains too simple , insofar as it depends on too restricted an account of representation , such that no one but the " moderns " could ever stand apart from their own experience . Lurking ...
... produce them . And yet in certain respects it remains too simple , insofar as it depends on too restricted an account of representation , such that no one but the " moderns " could ever stand apart from their own experience . Lurking ...
Page 13
... produced the dominant ideas of objectification I have sketched here , the idea of the object perforce appears against the background of ideas about the subject . It is this background that retains elements of religious and humanist ...
... produced the dominant ideas of objectification I have sketched here , the idea of the object perforce appears against the background of ideas about the subject . It is this background that retains elements of religious and humanist ...
Page 17
... producing — in objectifying and making inhabitable— the categories by which social difference is understood and evaluated . Moreover , since the power effects of language ( and of semiotic form more generally ) are not fully determinate ...
... producing — in objectifying and making inhabitable— the categories by which social difference is understood and evaluated . Moreover , since the power effects of language ( and of semiotic form more generally ) are not fully determinate ...
Contents
1 | |
Part I Locating Protestantism | 35 |
Part II Fetishisms | 147 |
Part III Purifications | 253 |
References | 291 |
Index | 315 |
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abstract actions adat agency agents Anakalang Anakalangese ancestral Anthropology belief Calvinism Calvinists Catholic century chapter Christian claims colonial Comaroff concept context contrast conversion creed culture discourse discussion distinction divine doctrine Dutch effects efforts encounter ethnographic evangelical example exchange expression fetishism freedom function Gereja Kristen Sumba global iconoclasm idea immaterial implications inculturation individual Indonesian instance Keane Kerk Kruyt Kuyper language ideology linguistic marapu followers marapu ritual material means meat mediation mission missionaries moral narrative narrative of modernity neo-orthodox Netherlands objectification objects one’s Onvlee pagan past Pentecostal people’s persistence persons Pietist political practices prayer Princeton problem Protestant Protestant Reformation Protestantism purification Reformed Churches religion religious religious conversion representational economy ritual speech role scriptural secular semiotic form semiotic ideology sense sincerity social society speak speaker spirits Sumbanese tion tradition transformation Umbu Neka University Press Waingapu West Sumba Wielenga Zending
Popular passages
Page 70 - APOSTLES' CREED I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord...
Page 70 - I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, Amen.
Page 93 - CIVILIZATION, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
Page 37 - Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all, Both what they judge and what they choose...
Page 70 - Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose from the dead ; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
Page 95 - It is a harsher, and at times even painful, office of ethnography to expose the remains of crude old culture which have passed into harmful superstition, and to mark these out for destruction.
Page 76 - The first set of practices, by "translation," creates mixtures between entirely new types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture. The second, by "purification," creates two entirely distinct ontological zones: that of human beings on the one hand; that of nonhumans on the other.