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. |
From inside the book
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Page 6
... economic well-being, or health but is also, and perhaps above all, about human emancipation and self-mastery. If in the past, humans were in thrall to illegitimate rulers, rigid traditions, and unreal fetishes, as they become modern ...
... economic well-being, or health but is also, and perhaps above all, about human emancipation and self-mastery. If in the past, humans were in thrall to illegitimate rulers, rigid traditions, and unreal fetishes, as they become modern ...
Page 11
... economy and the forms of estrangement described in the phenomenology of experience, the perspectives I have identified with Marx and Heidegger, respectively. As I have suggested, although the two perspectives show the world from vastly ...
... economy and the forms of estrangement described in the phenomenology of experience, the perspectives I have identified with Marx and Heidegger, respectively. As I have suggested, although the two perspectives show the world from vastly ...
Page 18
... economy. That is, practices and associated ideologies exist in dynamic relations with one another such that changes in one domain can have consequences for others. It is such a representational economy that Mary Poovey (1998) portrays ...
... economy. That is, practices and associated ideologies exist in dynamic relations with one another such that changes in one domain can have consequences for others. It is such a representational economy that Mary Poovey (1998) portrays ...
Page 19
... economy . The idea of representational economy is meant to situate words , things , and persons ( along with other agentive beings such as spirits ) dynamically within the same world with one another . It is meant to show how secular ...
... economy . The idea of representational economy is meant to situate words , things , and persons ( along with other agentive beings such as spirits ) dynamically within the same world with one another . It is meant to show how secular ...
Page 20
... economy, but it is the logic of a semiotic ideology that helps bring the effects into alignment. Thus, in a debate about correct ways of praying, for example, the con- cept of sincerity ties ways of speaking to the model of words as ...
... economy, but it is the logic of a semiotic ideology that helps bring the effects into alignment. Thus, in a debate about correct ways of praying, for example, the con- cept of sincerity ties ways of speaking to the model of words as ...
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.