Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission EncounterUniversity of California Press, 2007 M01 3 - 336 pages Across 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 xi
... first campus job interview . Looking at me across the table , he said dryly , " When I was a little boy in the Netherlands , each Sunday in church we gave our guilders for the mission in Sumba . Now I want to know what hap- pened with ...
... first campus job interview . Looking at me across the table , he said dryly , " When I was a little boy in the Netherlands , each Sunday in church we gave our guilders for the mission in Sumba . Now I want to know what hap- pened with ...
Page xii
... first at the University of Pennsylvania, then at Michigan. Fieldwork in Indonesia and archival research in the Netherlands was sup- ported by grants from the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies with funds from ...
... first at the University of Pennsylvania, then at Michigan. Fieldwork in Indonesia and archival research in the Netherlands was sup- ported by grants from the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies with funds from ...
Page 2
... First, in practice, the actual struggles that follow from these questions are perforce carried out among humans. Second, theologically, even the famously predestinarian Calvinists with whom I am most concerned eventually ruled questions ...
... First, in practice, the actual struggles that follow from these questions are perforce carried out among humans. Second, theologically, even the famously predestinarian Calvinists with whom I am most concerned eventually ruled questions ...
Page 3
... first century. Agency has been a ubiquitous topic in historical and anthropological writing for at least a generation. It has long been a critical element in the analysis of social structure and history. But the moral value of agency ...
... first century. Agency has been a ubiquitous topic in historical and anthropological writing for at least a generation. It has long been a critical element in the analysis of social structure and history. But the moral value of agency ...
Page 8
... First, where postcolonial societies have made Christianity their own, we miss something crucial if we see in their claims only the effects of colo- nialism. Second, the mission encounter helps make more visible some crit- ical themes ...
... First, where postcolonial societies have made Christianity their own, we miss something crucial if we see in their claims only the effects of colo- nialism. Second, the mission encounter helps make more visible some crit- ical themes ...
Contents
1 | |
Part I Locating Protestantism | 35 |
Part II Fetishisms | 147 |
Part III Purifications | 253 |
References | 291 |
Index | 315 |
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Common terms and phrases
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.