Description: In this volume, contributors offer rich ethnographic analyses of religious practices in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Burma that examine the roles materiality plays in the religious lives of Southeast Asians.
Brief description:
Julius Bautista is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is author of Figuring Catholicism: An Ethnohistory of the Santo Niño de Cebu and coeditor of Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and Conflict.
Review Quotes:
"By focusing on the material dimensions of religious life, this stimulating volume sheds new light on some important sources of both creativity and conflict in Southeast Asia. Through a fascinating range of cases, the authors demonstrate the power of things to provoke, facilitate, and constrain people's religious projects. This book is the fruitful outcome of strong local knowledge brought to bear on questions of wide interest across this complex region."--Webb Keane, University of Michigan, author of Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society and Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter