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 2
... important respects, Milton's remarks foreshadow my central themes. We can hear an echo of Milton in the common complaint Calvinists were direct- ing against their Catholic neighbors on the Indonesian island of Sumba in the 1990s. Good ...
... important respects, Milton's remarks foreshadow my central themes. We can hear an echo of Milton in the common complaint Calvinists were direct- ing against their Catholic neighbors on the Indonesian island of Sumba in the 1990s. Good ...
Page 7
... important strands of this tradition, the materiality of signifying practices comes to be identified with external constraints on the autonomy of human agents. Thus, this materiality can, in some respects, seem to pose a threat to ...
... important strands of this tradition, the materiality of signifying practices comes to be identified with external constraints on the autonomy of human agents. Thus, this materiality can, in some respects, seem to pose a threat to ...
Page 10
... criticisms of modernity. A good example of what I mean by these criticisms is Timothy Mitchell's important portrayal of incipient modernity in Egypt (1988). It is certainly one of the most sophisticated recent 10 / Introduction.
... criticisms of modernity. A good example of what I mean by these criticisms is Timothy Mitchell's important portrayal of incipient modernity in Egypt (1988). It is certainly one of the most sophisticated recent 10 / Introduction.
Page 14
... important to keep in mind the ways in which things and words are not wholly products of human intentions, mastered by human actions, and that they are not saturated with meanings. They are potentially objects in both the conceptual and ...
... important to keep in mind the ways in which things and words are not wholly products of human intentions, mastered by human actions, and that they are not saturated with meanings. They are potentially objects in both the conceptual and ...
Page 15
... important point is that these are not just ideas about language. They are about people. According to Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs (2003), for example, in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century western Europe the speaker of ...
... important point is that these are not just ideas about language. They are about people. According to Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs (2003), for example, in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century western Europe the speaker of ...
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.