Course Outline
This course will require approximately 6 hours of work per week, in addition to classroom time
Week 1: Introduce Course Concepts
Lecture- Critical reading and thinking skills
o ACE-AF – the Elements of Critical Assessment and Analysis
Tools for critically reading a text (or other document) by identifying the Evidence, the Conversation, the Argument, and the Authority (of the author, artifact, performance, or production)
Lecture/Discussion Participant Observation and the Anthropological Method
In-class writing assignment week 1:
Why am I here studying about religion and spirits in Southeast Asia?
The Making of Religion: Theoretical Grounding
Week 2: Invention and Imaginaire
Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The invention of world religions, or, How European universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapt 1 and 6
Collins, Steven. 1998. Introduction, in Nirvana and other Buddhist felicities: utopias of the Pali imaginaire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Introduction (1-121).
Pre-class writing assignment week 3: 2-page maximum
Describe the secular and the sacred and identify the author's arguments.
Week 3: On Purification
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chapters 1 and 6.
Morgan, David. “The Matter of Belief.” In Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, edited by David Morgan. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2010.
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Polution and Taboo [1966]. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Ethnographic fieldwork Due Week 4:
Participant observation: Record instances of social or institutional boundary marking that you encounter. Does not have to be related to spirits or religion. We’re looking for the enactment of social classification systems.
Intro, Chapter 1 & 2 (p, 1-50)
Week 4: On Power
Sahlins, Marshall. “The Original Political Society.” In On Kings, edited by David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, 23–65. Chicago: Hau Books, 2017.
Anderson, Benedict R O’G. “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture.” In Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, 17–77. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Mauss, Marcel. 1902 [1972]. A general theory of magic. London: Routledge and K. Paul. Chapter 3: The Elements of Magic
Week 5: Religion and Academics
Geertz, C. 1973. Religion as a Cultural System. In The Interpretation of Cultures: selected essays, 87–125.
Asad; T. 1983. Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz. Man 18 (2):237–259.
Descola, Philippe. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Chapter 1: Configurations of Continuity.
Week 6: Religion and Kings: Prowess and economic success
Wolters, O. W. 1982. History, culture, and religion in Southeast Asian perspectives. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Miscellaneous Notes on ‘Soul Stuff’ and ‘Prowess’, a ‘Hindu’ Man of Prowess.
Gibson, Thomas. 2007. Islamic narrative and authority in Southeast Asia: from the 16th to the 21st century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 2: The Ruler as Perfect Man in Southeast Asia, 1500-1667.
Davis, E. W. (2016). Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapt 3: Rice, Water, Hierarchy: The Wild and the Civil. Chapter 4: Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty
Ethnographic fieldwork Due Week 7: What are the characteristics of the powerful people around you. Fellow students, professors, coaches, parents, employers, others…. Watch them. What defines their power?
Gather at least 5 examples.
class discussion on observation skills and note taking
Noseworthy, W. (2013). The Cham’s First Highland Sovereign: Po Rome (R. 1627-1651). Asian Highlands Perspectives, 28, 155–203.
Week 7-8: Spirits and Religion
Readings Week 7: The Old Religion
Holt, John. 2009. Spirits of the place: Buddhism and Lao religious culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. Introduction and Chapter 1
Schweyer, Anne Valérie. “Potent Places in Central Vietnam: ‘Everything That Comes Out of the Earth Is Cham.’” Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 18, no. 5 (2017): 400–420. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2017.1370478.
Work, Courtney. “Chthonic Sovereigns? ‘Neak Ta’ in a Cambodian Village.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2019): 74–95.
Hayashi, Yukio. “Reconfiguration of Village Guardian Spirits among the Thai-Lao in Northeastern Thailand.” In Founders’ Cults in Southeast Asia: Ancestors, Polity, and Identity, edited by N Tannenbaum and C.A Kammerer, 184–209. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 2003.
Week 8: Christianity
Jocano, Landa F. 1965. “Conversion and the Patterning of Christian Experience in Malitbog, Central Panay, Philippines. Philippine Sociological Review. 13(2). Pp. 96-119.
Cannell, Fenella. 1999. “The Funeral of the ‘Dead Christ’”, in Power and intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. (Grad students add: “Kinship, reciprocity and devotions to the saints”).
Iteanu, Andre. 2017. “Continuity and Breaches in Religion and Globalization, a Melanesian Point of View”. In The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Cham: Palgrave Macmillian.
Week 9: Midterm- No Class
10-11: Spirits and Religion
Week 10: Buddhism
Spiro, Melford. 1996. “Supernaturalism and Buddhism”. Burmese Supernaturalism. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Chapter 4, Nats; Chapter 12, the Shaman; Chapter 14, Supernaturalism and Buddhism
Brac de La Perrière, Bénédicte. “Possession and Rebirth in Burma (Myanmar).” Contemporary Buddhism 16, no. 1 (2015): 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2015.1013000.
Kitiarsa, Pattana. “Magic Monks and Spirit Mediums in the Politics of Thai Popular Religion.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 209–26.
Week 11: Islam
Stock, Emiko. “Two Rituals, a Bit of Dualism and Possibly Some Inseparability: “And so That’s How We Say That Chams and Khmers Are One and the Same.".” SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 31, no. 3 (2016): 786–825. https://doi.org/10.1355/sj31-3c.
Barraud, Cecile. 2017. “A Wall, Even in Those Days! Encounters with Religions and What Became of the Tradition”, in, The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Cham: Palgrave Macmillian.
Pemberton, John. 1994. On the Subject of ‘Java’. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chapter 4 and Chapter 6.
Ethnographic Fieldwork Due Week 12: Interview 3 people to learn their beliefs or family history with religion (faith).
Tell me about…. ?
Week 12-13: Spirits: Not so supernatural
Week 12 Readings: Only natural
Kaartinen, Timo. 2016. Boundaries of Humanity: Non-human others and animist ontology in Eastern Indonesia. In K. Århem and G. Sprenger (Eds.), Animism in Southeast Asia, (219-235). London; New York: Routledge..
Remme, J. H. Z. (2016). Actualizing Spirits: Ifugao animism as onto-praxis. In K. Århem & G. Sprenger (Eds.), Animism in Southeast Asia (138–153). London; New York: Routledge.
Janowski, M. (2017). The Dynamics of the Cosmic Conversation: Beliefs about spirits among the Kelabit and Penan of the upper Baram River, Sarawak. In K. Århem & G. Sprenger (Eds.), Animism in Southeast Asia (181–204). London and New York: Routledge.
Howell, S. 2016. Seeing and Knowing: Metamorphosis and the fragility of species in Chewong animistic ontology. In K. Århem and G. Sprenger (Eds.), Animism in Southeast Asia, (55-72). London; New York: Routledge.
Paper Due: week 13
Week 13: Economy and Markets
Boomgaard, P. 2013 [1995]. Sacred Trees and Haunted Forests in Indonesia—Particularly Java, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In, Asian Perspectives of Nature: A Critical Approach, eds. O. Bruun and A. Kalland, 48-62. New York. Routledge.
Graeber, David. “Fetishism and Social Creativity, or Fetishes Are Gods in Process of Construction” 21, no. October (2005): 21–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499605059230.
Sprenger, Guido. 2014. Where the Dead Go to the Market: Market and Ritual as Social Systems in Upland Southeast Asia. In, Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia: Magic and Modernity, eds. V. Gottowik. Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press.
Keane, Webb. “The Value of Words and the Meaning of Things in Eastern Indonesian Exchange.” Man 29, no. 3 (1994): 605–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/2804345.
Ethnographic fieldwork Due Week 14: Interview three people to learn their beliefs about nature.
Discuss the unstructured interview and the work of creating and revising questions
Week 14-15: Knowing the Dead
Week 14: Social Relationships
Langford; J. M. 2009. Gifts Intercepted: Biopolitics and Spirit Debt. Cultural Anthropology 24: 681-71 (4):681–711.
Hornbacher, Annette. 2014. Contested Moksa in Balinese Agama Hindu: Balinese Death Rituals between Ancestor Worship and Modern Hinduism. In, Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia: Magic and Modernity, eds. V. Gottowik. Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press.
Cannell, Fenella. 1999. “The Living and the Dead”, in Power and intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press
Week 15: Persistence and Presence
Kwon; H. 2008. Ghosts of War in Vietnam. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Introduction and Chapter 1: Ghosts of War and Chapter 3: Mass excavation.
CBS News report: https://youtu.be/W0AmOw06lA0
A tape that the US played via helicopter over suspected Vietcong strongholds: https://youtu.be/4d9H_1ygEv8
(thanks to Joseph Konkel for finding these documents)
Davis, E. W. (2016). Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapters 5: Binding Mighty Death: The Craft and Authority of the Rag Robe in Cambodian Ritual Technology.
Presentation: Grave stuff
In class writing Week 15: What conversation about death are these authors entering?
Week 16: Course Review; Review key concepts and insights, and clarify questions.
Week 17-18: Paper Presentations
Final Papers Due: on or before scheduled final exam
Individual student presentations on final paper projects
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