Resources on Indonesia: ebooks

"Part travelogue, part history, and as fascinating as the country it describes." - Emily Brennan, New York Times

"Based on research in Indonesia, this book examines how talk plays an important role in mediating social relations in two urban spaces where linguistic and cultural diversity is the norm and where distinctions between newcomers and old timers changes regularly. How do people who do not share expectations about how they should behave build new expectations through participating in conversation?"

"Indonesia provides particularly interesting examples of gender diversity. Same-sex relations, transvestism and cross-gender behaviour have long been noted amongst a wide range of Indonesian peoples. This book explores the nature of gender diversity in Indonesia, and with the world's largest Muslim population, it examines Islam in this context. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it discusses in particular calalai – female-born individuals who identify as neither woman nor man; calabai – male-born individuals who also identify as neither man nor woman; and bissu – an order of shamans who embody female and male elements. The book examines the lives and roles of these variously gendered subjectivities in everyday life, including in low-status and high-status ritual such as wedding ceremonies, fashion parades, cultural festivals, Islamic recitations and shamanistic rituals."

"This book examines women's activism in the early years of independent Indonesia when new attitudes to gender, nationalism, citizenship and democratization were forming. It questions the meaning of democratization for women and their relationship to national sovereignty within the new Indonesian state, and discusses women's organizations and their activities; women's social and economic roles; and the different cultural, regional and ethnic attitudes towards women, while showing the failure of political change to fully address women's gender interests and needs."

Based on a two-year research study, this book looks comparatively at Islamic education and politics in several Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia. The book shows "that the great majority of schools have nothing to do with violence but are undergoing changes that have far-reaching implications for democracy, gender relations, pluralism, and citizenship. Making Modern Muslims offers an important reassessment of Muslim culture and politics in Southeast Asia and provides insights into the changing nature of state-society relations from the late colonial period to the present. It allows us to better appreciate the astonishing dynamism of Islamization in Southeast Asia and the struggle for Muslim hearts and minds taking place today."

"In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, Muslims struggle to reconcile radically different sets of social norms and laws, including those derived from Islam, local social norms, and contemporary ideas about gender equality and rule of law. In this study, John Bowen explores this struggle, through archival and ethnographic research in villages and courtrooms of the Aceh Province, Sumatra, and through interviews with national religious and legal figures. He analyses the social frameworks for disputes about land, inheritance, marriage, divorce, Islamic History and, more broadly, about the relationships between the state and Islam, and between Muslims and non-Muslims."

"Cosmopolitan ideals and pluralist tendencies have been employed creatively and adapted carefully by Muslim individuals, societies and institutions in modern Southeast Asia to produce the necessary contexts for mutual tolerance and shared respect between and within different groups in society. Organised around six key themes that interweave the connected histories of three countries in Southeast Asia – Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia – this book shows the ways in which historical actors have promoted better understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims in the region. Case studies from across these countries of the Malay world take in the rise of the network society in the region in the 1970s up until the early 21st century, providing a panoramic view of Muslim cosmopolitan practices, outlook and visions in the region."

Examines three major Islamic practices found in Indonesia through case studies, ranging from the mystic Islam found in Yogyakarta to the mixture of local and Hadhrami influences in the Islamic practice of South Sumatra, and an ‘imported' form of reform Islam in an area of recent settlement. "The analysis shows that Islam in Indonesia is pluriform, and that it is influenced by translocal transfers of ideas, practices, texts as well as embedment in local cultural contexts. Islam's entanglement as a global religion with local sets of practices can be opened up by the concept of the religioscape. The analysis further illustrates that different variants of local Islam, as opposed to the idea of a universal Islam, have not lost their significance in Indonesia. This means that the plural and moderate Islam prevalent in Indonesia is not on the decline, and that rather than Islamization, a piousization can be observed to be taking place."

"Professor M.B. Hooker looks at how modern Indonesian Islamic thinking has responded to changes in social and cultural practices in this timely book. In particular he examines how authorities have ruled on such basic issues as purity and representation of doctrine, religious obligations, status and capacity of women, Islam and medical science, and offences against religion. Hooker s research has been drawn from around 2000 fatawa - formal opinion on points of law or dogma - collected from Indonesia between 1920 and 1990. The authority of the fatwa is independent of the state and is uncontaminated by European intellectual imperialism. It thus gives us a pure response to difficult issues from within Islamic thought..."

"In most Islamic societies, freedom of religion or belief is not a reality for religious minorities. Indonesia, home of the biggest Muslim population in the world, is a positive exception in this regard. The country was always a role model for the peaceful co-existence of diverse religious and cultural traditions, but in recent years, Islamic fundamentalist groups challenge the country's tolerant and pluralistic identity. This book inquires the development of freedom of religion or belief from a political, legal and religious perspective. It analyzes the laws and mechanisms that protect the rights of minorities and traces the role of the country's most important Islamic organizations and the influence they have on national policy-making."

"Drawing on Max Weber’s approach to legal rationalization—which stimulated a transfer from the patrimonial tradition of law to a more systematic and rational legal code—Modernization, Tradition and Identity investigates how and why Islamic justice in Indonesia has evolved over the years. Euis Nurlaelawati delves into classic Islamic legal texts—known as the fiqh—and shows their significance in Indonesian state and Islamic family law, how they are interpreted by judges to justify deviations from state legislation, and the role they play in debates between Muslim scholars and religious court judges."