Organizer: Ronald Lukens-Bull, St. Martin’s College
Chair: Audrey E. Mouser, Going Global, Inc.
Discussant: Clark E. Cunningham, University of Illinois, Urbana-Chambaign
This panel examines Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist sacred geography in Southeast Asia. Older studies of Southeast Asian sacred geography focus on the spatialization of ancient cosmologies. This panel suggests that in the contexts of globalization and modernization, and more recently in the context of economic and political crisis, that we can see in sacred geography, spatialized notions of the relationship between "tradition" and "change." The papers in this panel suggest a number of new ways of considering sacred geography. Development schemes may limit sacred sites or require their relocation. New sacred sites are sometimes created, for example in the interior of Borneo, where they are a part of new pan-ethnic religious affiliations. Sacred sites may also come to embody a model for how the faithful should encounter modernization and globalization. Finally, sacred geography may also be invoked in times of national crisis as a stabilizing force. Taken as a whole this panel suggests new ways of understanding sacred geography in Southeast Asia.
Chinese Cemeteries and the Impact of Urbanization and Economic Development
Rebecca B. Aiken, Indiana University
Chinese burials are located by preference in the rural lands of the lineage, and can be easily seen throughout China. The locations are chosen based on proximity to the lineage seat which would comprise the residence and ceremonial hall location for the living lineage. Additional location considerations are based on feng shui. While there have been periods of official disapproval of traditional burial customs, the customs persist very strongly and can be seen today. This research addresses the issues of what happens when the burials must take place in urban areas and when overseas migration has occurred. In these instances two of the main strands in traditional burial are broken: the burial cannot be on the lands of the rural lineage seat, and the lineage may be fragmented by the migration so that the living group carrying out the burial is entirely transformed.
The research question is: what changes occur in the burial arrangements and what is the organization of the cemetery given the new social and symbolic order of the relocated population? Comparative cemetery examples of North American and Southeast Asian migration have been collected and analyzed. A taxonomy of burial and cemetery arrangements has been developed. The focus of the discussion will be the new Singapore urban cemetery. The physical and symbolic arrangement of this newly developed sacred space will be examined for the impact of modern economic and social change on the traditional burial patterns of the Chinese.
New Sacred Lands: Christian Revival and Religious Retreat in Sarawak
Matthew Amster, Wheaton College
This paper looks at the phenomenon of religious revival among the Kelabit and Lun Bawang peoples in interior Borneo and the establishment of an annual pilgrimage to Mt. Murud, the highest mountain in Sarawak. Pilgrimage to Mt. Murud was first inspired by a charismatic Lun Bawang figure, the late Agong Bangau, who reportedly performed miracles and who, himself, used the mountain as a place for retreat and meditation. In 1990, the first church was constructed near the summit of this mountain and annual pilgrimages began to be held. In this paper, I review the religious movement that led to the creation of the Church on Mt. Murud, including the charismatic movement surrounding Agong Bangau’s teachings in the 1980s and the earlier religious revival that took place in the Kelabit Highlands in the 1970s focusing on the Holy Spirit. Both of these revival movements provide critical background for understanding the current practices of pilgrimage and retreat on Mt. Murud. An important feature of this pilgrimage, and the broader religious movement into which it is situated, is that it firmly links neighboring ethnic groups into a single church, drawing adherents from both sides of the international border separating Malaysia and Indonesia and contributing to the shaping of a pan-ethnic Christian identity in the region.
Spatializing Social and Religious Change in Islamic Java
Ronald Lukens-Bull, St. Martin’s College
This paper relates the processes of modernization and globalization to sacred geography. Specifically, it explores a sacred site in Java that serves as an imago mundi, that is, a model for how the sacred and the profane should be ordered in the lives of Indonesian Muslims. This site is Tebu Ireng, an Islamic boarding school of a type called pesantren in Java and madrasa elsewhere in the Islamic world. It has been for many traditionalist Muslims in Indonesia a focal model for how to engage modernization through education. In addition to being a popular boarding school for students from throughout Indonesia, it is also a popular pilgrimage destination. At the physical center of Tebu Ireng is a mosque-graveyard complex that commemorates the life of the founder of Tebu Ireng who is remembered and revered as both Sufi master and national hero. Around this physical and spiritual center number of new spaces (schools, telecommunication offices, computer labs, and banks) have emerged. The changes that Tebu Ireng has undergone in its first century of existence have been spatialized into a near-mandala pattern moving from most sacred (the mosque-graveyard complex) to decidedly profane (a bank). It is argued here that in the very geography and physical structure of Tebu Ireng spatialize the kinds of relationships that the school’s leaders argue that Muslim should have with the State, secular science, and the global market place.
Contested Notions of the Sacred Center in Indonesia
Mark R. Woodward, Arizona State University
Traditional Javanese states relied heavily on concepts of "sacred geography" to establish their legitimacy. This paper examines the ways in which these concepts have influenced the course of modern Indonesian history and politics by focusing on the competing claims of two cities, Jakarta and Yogyakarta to be the sacred center of the Indonesian Republic.
The tension between the two cities has existed since the time of the Indonesian revolution. Jakarta was the capitol of the Netherlands Indies and the city in which independence was declared. Yogyakarta, historically, the most militantly anti-Dutch Javanese state, came to be known as the "Mother City" of the revolution. Often called "the center of Javanese culture," it is home to the ancient monuments of Borobudur and Prambanan.
In the post revolutionary period, monuments were constructed in Jakarta to establish it as the "national center." A parallel set of monuments was constructed in Yogyakarta to establish its position as the "Mother City" of the nation.
During the political and economic crisis of 1998, Yogyakarta reasserted its claims. While Jakarta burned in the week of the twentieth of May a million people gathered peacefully at the Yogyakarta palace demanding among other things, that the city be named the national capitol because of its history and spiritual purity.
Exploring relations between the two cities in terms of the concept of sacred geography contributes to the understanding of the ways in which traditional concepts of authority continue to shape the politics on modern Southeast Asian states.