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 11
... distinction between material things and their abstract structures, linked by universal semiosis, “a world of signs” (1988: 14).6 Mitchell sees this effect as producing the distinction between material bodies and immaterial souls, and as ...
... distinction between material things and their abstract structures, linked by universal semiosis, “a world of signs” (1988: 14).6 Mitchell sees this effect as producing the distinction between material bodies and immaterial souls, and as ...
Page 14
... distinctions that I sub- ject to critical scrutiny in this book. I insist on the distinction here, how- ever, because it is analytically important to keep in mind the ways in which things and words are not wholly products of human ...
... distinctions that I sub- ject to critical scrutiny in this book. I insist on the distinction here, how- ever, because it is analytically important to keep in mind the ways in which things and words are not wholly products of human ...
Page 18
... distinction between what counts as language and what does not is itself constructed ideologically, and it differs across his- torical and social contexts. Second, there are places in this book in which my primary focus is on material ...
... distinction between what counts as language and what does not is itself constructed ideologically, and it differs across his- torical and social contexts. Second, there are places in this book in which my primary focus is on material ...
Page 22
... distinction between speech and linguistic system. The most important are these: the radical distinction between signs and the world; and the doctrine of arbitrariness, which held that there are in principle no relations between signs ...
... distinction between speech and linguistic system. The most important are these: the radical distinction between signs and the world; and the doctrine of arbitrariness, which held that there are in principle no relations between signs ...
Page 24
... distinctions . In this respect , they make some of the core assumptions of their Euro- American world visible and reveal some of the moral imperatives and anx- ieties these entail — as we can see with the help of the ones they are ...
... distinctions . In this respect , they make some of the core assumptions of their Euro- American world visible and reveal some of the moral imperatives and anx- ieties these entail — as we can see with the help of the ones they are ...
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.