Defining ‘Modern’ Malay womanhood and the coexistent messages of the veil

The gender constructions and performances of Malay women are often perceived by outside researchers as ‘shrouded under a veil’ of increasing Islamic conservatism. Urban Malay women, however, argue that women actively engage in the construction and performance of gender identities. Based on research conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during 2001 and 2003, this article argues that women advantageously alter, transform and utilise the constructs placed upon them by Islam, by ethnic identification and by conceptions of ‘modernity’. Often one image of ‘womanhood’ is presented and in public - an image that is socially accepted, honoured and respected - while less publicly alternative forms of ‘womanhood’ articulate individual goals and aims. Using an agent-oriented perspective, this article further includes an analysis of women's individual renegotiations of larger cultural constructs and the ways in which the tudong, or headscarf, has become a symbol by which individual women express their understanding of social position and personal freedoms in an industrialised Islamic context.     

Religion and Spirituality in Lonely Planet's India

For years, the authors of the best-selling guide to India, Lonely Planet, has shaped the perspectives of many travellers. This article considers how religion is constructed as a category and how it is made relevant to travellers. I argue that ‘religion’ comes in two versions, one pertaining to the Indian hosts and one to travellers. Religion is based on tradition, faith and historical institutions, whose members, rituals and sacred sites are of interest to travellers. Spirituality has to do with the personal development of travellers and is exclusively referred to as philosophy.     

The danger of Durkheim: Ambiguity in the theory of social effervescence

The purpose of this article is to shed light on an ambiguity in Émile Durkheim's theory of social effervescence. Durkheim's failure to distinguish two kinds of effervescence at the heart of the religious rite has left a dangerous legacy in the study of religion. If his work is read, however, in light of René Girard's theory of the violent origins of religion, his analysis of la société can retain the distinction between the effervescence of the crowd in scapegoating and the effervescence of protecting the victims of scapegoating. This thesis is tested by briefly comparing some contemporary essays on Durkheim.     

Philosophy of science and the study of religion

This paper responds to the six papers from the Tokyo IAHR session.     

Negotiating local tradition with Taoism: Female ritual specialists in the Zhuang religion

The introduction of Taoism to many local religions in Southwest China was instrumental to the southern expansion of imperial China. Pivotal to the hierarchy of both the Taoist celestial imperium and traditional Han Chinese society, the ideology of male dominance has likewise prevailed over a large area of this region, although in varying forms and degrees. Meanwhile, indigenous people of the region have continually and creatively negotiated their own respective worldviews with Taoism, importantly including distinct gender ideals and practices. Using religious texts and ethnographic material, this article focuses on the ritual negotiation between opposing concepts of gender: one from the Chinese imperium, the male-privileging Chinese Taoist religion introduced from the north, the other locally situated in the women-empowering religion of the Zhuang people and of many other religions across Southwest China and Southeast Asia. This article focuses on the interactions between local ideals and world religions.     

Conclusion: Construction sites at the juncture of religion and gender

The articles in this special issue offer fresh definitions of ‘new’ and ‘old’, of ‘local’ and ‘world’ religions. The themes of purity, danger and fundamentalism; female leadership, mediumship, self-sexism; and natalism and nationalism are discussed. This conclusion stresses the ‘folk’ sources of ‘mainstream’ religions, and focuses on the way the articles show women to be at the juncture of changing values concerning religion and gender, reform and fundamentalism.