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The Potent Dead - Ancestors, saints and heroes in contemporary Indonesia (Paperback)
Loot Price: R915
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The Potent Dead - Ancestors, saints and heroes in contemporary Indonesia (Paperback)
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The dead are potent and omnipresent in modern Indonesia. Presidents
and peasants alike meditate before sacred graves to exploit the
power they confer, and mediums do good business curing the sick by
interpreting the wishes of deceased forebears. Among non-Muslims
there are ritual burials of the bones of the dead in monuments both
magnificent and modest. By promoting dead heroes to a nationalist
pantheon, regions and ethnic groups establish their place within
the national story.Although much has been written about the local
forms of the scriptural religions to which modern Indonesians are
required by law to adhere - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and
Buddhism - this is the first book to assess the indigenous systems
of belief in the spirits of ancestors. Sometimes these systems are
condemned in the name of the formal religions, but more often the
potent dead coexist as a private dimension of everyday religious
practice.A unique team of anthropologists, historians and literary
scholars from Europe, Australia and North America demonstrate the
continuing importance of the potent dead for understanding
contemporary Indonesia. At the same time, they help us understand
historic processes of conversion to Islam and Christianity by
examining the continuing interactions of the spirit world with
formal religion.
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