Reassessing Ritual in Southeast Asian Studies
CSEAS, Kyoto University and ARI, National University of Singapore
February 25-26, 2013
ABSTRACTS
Performing the Way of the Cross: Rituals of Self-Mortification in the Catholic
Philippines
Julius Bautista
In this paper I provide an analysis of the Via Crucis y Pasion y Muerte (“The Way of the
Cross”), a Passion Play in which actors from the province of Pampanga, Philippines
perform Christ’s crucifixion by having themselves nailed to the cross in front of
thousands of spectators. Filipino Catholics are often taken as exemplars of the vitality
and frenetic growth of Christian populations in the ‘Global South’ amidst the staggering
decline of the faith in its traditional Western bastions. How can one think ofself-mortification in the Philippines as offering new ways of thinking about ritual
practice? By examining the crucifixion rituals, I aim to highlight the limits of themethodological frameworks that have been used in situating Filipino Catholicism withinwider discussions about global Christendom.
The Death of Civil Society and the Life of RitualFrancis Lim Khek Gee
In various Southeast Asian societies, the coexistence of intense religious ritual activities
with efforts at modernization has provided scholars with important material to criticallyengage with various forms of secularization theory. While debates and criticismsabound with regard to secularization theory, I propose that it is also timely to embark ona critical engagement with the concept of ‘civil society’ and how this concept has
shaped our understanding of religion and ritual in society. The dominant conception of‘civil society’ in the social sciences today draws on considerable intellectual resourcesfrom the European liberal political tradition. Such conception tends to posit not only adomain that is autonomous of the state, family and the market, but also paints a pictureof modern society that is highly differentiated into distinct domains of activities. In thisway, ‘religion’ and the ‘religious’ have been allotted their autonomous domain distinct

from the ‘political’ and the ‘economic’, and ‘civil society’ becomes a space whereactors from these supposedly distinct domains can engage with one another. One
important consequence is that ritual has largely been conceptually confined to thereligious domain. I will draw upon a recent work, Ritual and Its Consequences (OUP,2008), by Seligman, Weller, Puett and Simon, to highlight the need to examine ritual as
an important component in all aspects of everyday social life, and not just in thereligious domain. I will also attempt to offer a critique of Seligman et. al.’s idea thatritual functions essentially in the subjunctive mode. I suggest that ritual activity can in
addition be usefully analysed in terms of its more broadly conjunctive aspect, especiallyits function of imposing some sort of generic truth property by bring together mixed
conjunctions from social discourses.
Changing Urbanisms and the Ritual Ecology of Waterloo Street, Singapore
Daniel PS Goh
Waterloo Street is one of the oldest streets in the civic center of Singapore. It boasts a
series of religious buildings from different faiths, many built in the nineteenth century,sited close to each other. In the postcolonial period, public housing estates sprung up in
the area. More recently, the Waterloo streetscape has been undergoing transformation
due to urban renewal, heritage regulation, and infrastructural works accompanying
global city making. Centering on the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, arguably themost popular temple among Chinese Buddhist-Taoist religionists in Singapore, thispaper discusses the ritual ecology of Waterloo Street in the context of the urban changes.
I discuss three questions using archival and ethnographic materials. How have thereligious rituals practiced in close proximity influenced each other and with what
implications for religious beliefs and identities? How have the rituals been affected byurban developments in the area? How have the rituals influenced the Waterloo
streetscape and the urbanisms impinging on it? Existing studies of ritual have focusedon discrete religious communities and its relationship to bounded places. This paper
seeks to look instead at the dynamic ritual ecology of interacting religious practices andthe secularizing city.
Building Pagodas, Following Buddhist Saints in Sacred Land across theThai-Myanmar Border
Yoko Hayami

Taking ritual in its most general sense as “formal action directed at the sacred”,
pagoda-building is ritual action. In this paper, I look at the building of pagodas andreligious edifices as ritual action by charismatic religious figures across the Thai-Burmaborder, and how the process involves the devotees, from impoverished hill population,
refugees, local Buddhists as well as business people, and people of power and authority
as high as the king and royalty. I examine whether it configures with the political, socialand religious landscape across the state boundary.
There is a controversial saintly monk, a Sgaw Karen from Karen State Burma, who has
accumulated followers mostly among Karen people, but also supporters from among themost powerful people in the regime, and has been associated with the political split in
the ethnic opposition force. He is supported by the regime, and yet has managed tomaintain his charismatic power and followings, actively constructing religious and otheredifices on both sides of the Thai-Myanmar border. How can a figure so involved inpolitical and military power maintain a saintly reputation? By attempting to answer thisquestion, I want to consider pagoda construction in the present-day context on bothsides of the border.
I first introduce the controversial monk and his pagoda construction in Burma. Secondly,
I cross the border and consider saintly figures in northern Thailand in the khruba
tradition, who are also involved in construction of monasteries as well as pagodas. This
shift across borders is an inevitable one, as U Thuzana, the same Karen monk from
Myanmar transcends national borders and is considered a khruba on the Thai side. I
consider the context in which this monk easily crosses the border, connecting his
followers on both sides, as well as the implications of considering this as ritual in thepresent day.

When the King Came to Town:Powers at the Periphery in Upcountry Sri Lanka
John Clifford HoltClassical theories about “pulsating galactic polities” (Tambiah) and the “doctrine of the
exemplary center (Geertz) are, indeed, clearly articulated in the liturgical dynamics
obtaining between chief religious shrines of the former royal capital of Kandy andritually-related outlying rural villages in surrounding upcountry Sri Lanka. From the
mid-eighteenth century, the annual alut sal mangalyaya (“new rice festival”) and asalaperahera (procession of the Dalada [“Tooth-Relic” of the Buddha]) evince a semiotic ofpower about how agricultural fertility is insured and socio-political hierarchy

maintained, both forms of power understood to radiate from the capital center to village
peripheries. In this paper, I examine three local sthalapuranas (myths of origins about
the establishment of shrines) germane to relevant village devalayas that seem to reflect
concerted attempts on the part of village to assert the subordination of royal power tolocalized divine power, to declare and defend an intrinsic power of place in the
periphery that is not simply a consequence of royally sponsored rites performed at thecapital center. Faint echoes of this resistance can still be heard in contemporary
relations between central government officials and local village interests.
Trance Dancers or Interlocutors of the Immortals?:

Vietnamese Spirit Mediums In

Global Perspective
Janet Hoskins
Two different modes of spirit mediumship are explored in contemporary Vietnamese
communities. Those who “serve the spirits” of princes, heroes and goddesses fall intoa lucid trance, in which they feel their bodies moving spontaneously to music and can
bestow gifts of luck, health and wealth to their audience. Those who “haveconversations with divinities” speak through swaying a phoenix basket, which traces
out the cursive letters of literary texts.
Both of these practices emerge from East
Asian traditions associated with Taoism, of either the popular or elite variety. One isassociated with bringing history back to life by incarnating the members of the imperial
court in the market streets of urban Vietnam or garage temples in suburban Orange
County. The other is a solemn but usually secret ceremony in which wisdom is passed
on in a complex poetic language full of hidden meanings. This paper compares the
trance dancers of Dao Mau (“The Way of the Mother Goddesses”) with the literary
mediums of Cao Dai (“The Highest Power”) and looks at the different experiences
conjured up in these linked, but quite distinct, forms of ritual expression.
God Coercion and God Worship of the Lahu Christians in Northern Thai Hills
Tatsuki Kataoka
It has long been discussed that our academic approach to Southeast Asian religion isbiased by the perspective of modern Western Christianity. In this paper, focused on acase study of the Lahu of the mainland Southeast Asian uplands, I will present a morenuanced understanding of so-called ritualism in Southeast Asian religion and its
transformation.

The bias mentioned above has been originated in Weber’s arguments on rationalizationof religion. In this series of discussions, the essential divide was set between “godcoercion” and “god worship” in religious orientation. Modeled after the Western
experience of Protestantism, “rationalization” is supposed to be a movement from god
coercion or ritualism toward a form more centered on god worship. In this perspective
ritual itself is marginalized as a residue of “pure religion”, otherwise a romanticized“other” still free from the Western domination. Accordingly, interpretations of recent
religious changes in Southeast Asia have been also divided between “rationalists” andtheir “anti-Western/ anti-modernist” critiques.
However, both views are equally simplistic and one-sided to understand what ishappening in the field of religious transformation. The Lahu and their conversion to
Christianity offer a good case study to reconsider such dichotomy. Their case show thatin the course of Christianization of the Lahu religion and indigenization of Christianity,“rationalization” or purification of god-worship-centered doctrine and “backsliding” toritualism or god coercion are at work at the same time. It is this tension which hasprovided a driving force of dynamics in the Lahu religion and its history.

Filipino religiosity in Japanese hinterlands: appraising Catholicism in the lives ofFilipina residents in Japan
Mario Ivan Lopez
The expression, demonstration, and validation of faith plays a fundamental role in the
lives of migrants who travel overseas. This paper examines how long-term Filipino
migrants settled in Japan, express their Catholic religiosity, and imbue it with newmeaning as one of the everyday practices available to them.
I examine how for some, through long-term settlement in Japan, religiosity becomes
activated through sharing and discussing instability in family life in order to weather theuncertainty of overseas residence. Through ethnographic analysis of personal anddevotional practices used at Catholic gatherings, I analyze the meanings behind
Filipinas appeals to each other through Catholic practices and demonstrate that they are
re-invested with new meanings in Japan.
I finally argue that the discussions that take place between individuals and members ofnascent communities present an ongoing process of reflecting upon and voicing
personal trajectories. The communicative role of rituals such as devotional appealing ingatherings suggests that some Filipinas become aware of the potential they have in
restructuring their homes and subsequently, the social relations they share with families
and partners.
Ritual and Art in Thai Buddhism
Justin McDaniel
The study of Thai Buddhist art has just begun to recognize the importance of images in
the practice of ritual. However, in the few studies that exist, images are seen as being
part of a ritual “context.” This paper will further question the study “individual” piecesof art and the notion of “a ritual context.” Moreover, since, Art historians in Southeast
Asia have primarily concentrated on the study of images, stupas, manuscripts, andmurals produced by the elite before the nineteenth century. I will shift focus in this talkand concentrate on vernacular art made in the last 150 years. While certain images inThai Buddhism are lauded for their age or precious materials, most are honored for theirconnection to certain powerful monks, ghosts, and kings. Many of these highly revered
and powerful images are made out of wax or wood, or crudely and mass–produced
bronze, plastic copper, resin, or clay. Furthermore, instead of concentrating on theorigins of pieces of art, I want to study art as it exists and operates in dynamic ritual
activities and highly complex synchronic relationships with other images and withpatrons, artists, and visitors. I want to move beyond aesthetic and iconographic analyses
of individual objects, and focus on recipients, rituals, and agents, as well as the agencyof the “things” themselves. Finally, I argue that images, photographs, murals, amulets,and buildings do not exist in static and repeated contexts, but in synchronic anddiachronic relationships.
De-subjectification and Re-subjectification in/by rituals: Muslim-Buddhist
relationships in a Southern Thai village
Ryoko Nishii
Religious boundaries between Muslims and Buddhists are not fixed in everyday
practices in a village of Muslim-Buddhist co-resident on the west coast of Southern
Thailand. In the village, about 20 percent of marriages are intermarriages between
Muslims and Buddhists. There are two terms that can be translated as religion. One issatsana, which refers to knowing bun (merit) and bap (sin). These are human qualities
that both Muslims and Buddhists share, in contrast with beasts, which do not know bun
and bap. Another is phasa, which refers to the differentiated practices peculiar to eachreligion. Phasa is usually understood as “language” and “speech” in standard Thai.
However, in southern Thailand the meaning of phasa is explained as custom (prapheni),
or to do, act, or perform a practice (patibat). Phasa is commonly used in designating thereligious practice of both Muslims, phasa khaek, and Buddhists, phasa thai. When theword phasa is used, it contrastively indicates religious difference. In religious rituals theboundary between Muslims and Buddhists, that is, the difference of phasa, becomesapparent. Each side must follow its own religious ways. In the anthropological theory of
rituals they pointed out that actors are de-subjectified in the process of rituals. However,in the context of Muslim-Buddhist co-resident village, to perform religious rituals
designate their identity versus another phasa people. It means rituals make themre-subjectified.
Peutroen Aneuk: the ritual of the infants first time of getting out in Aceh-Kluet,
Community, Indonesia
Sehat Ihsan Shadiqin
In this article, I will attempt to explain how Aceh-Kluet tribe community celebrate theirinfant first day get out of a house. In traditional Aceh-Kluet community an infant will
get out of house after 44 days of given birth. There are more than six rituals prepared
related to this event, such as; petroen, pemanoe, peusilek, peuaqiqah, peucicap, peukap
pha manok, dan peurateb/marhaban. Peusilek ritual conduct only for a son. Each rituallead by different person acording to their specializing. This article will try to explain
how Aceh-Kluet tribe society describe the ritual according to the readiness of the infants
to face their future. There are two kind of future life in Kluetnese mind; worldly lifeand hereafter life. Worldly life means as period where children will obtain with two kindof life: cruel and peace. Through this ritual, they guides their infant to choose a peaceside and leave brutal side in their environment to get harmonious life. Meanwhile inhereafter life, they guide their infant about what they should do here for the sake of theireternal life. In eternal life everybody must be responsible for his/her performance during
they live in the world. The good performance will recieve good reward and vice versa.
In this article I argue that the worldview of Aceh-Kluet people which is built since thefirst time they get out of the house.

Possession Ritual in Contemporary Society: Religion and Modernity amongst theCham Vietnamese
Yasuko Yoshimoto
It has been pointed out that the popular religion which once attacked as superstitious
and wasteful has “revived” in contemporary Vietnam. Possession rituals are one of thecases which become a conspicuous feature of contemporary life. This presentation,
based on case study of religious practices among the Cham in south-central part ofVietnam, aims to demonstrate the actual conditions of the possession ritual called rija incontemporary village society. To consider them, first, I will focus on the official
narratives and cultural policy in the research area. Second, I will describe the meaning
and the actual conditions of the rituals of rija which are practiced by the villagers. Then,
I will examine the impact and the influence of modernization to the religious practices
in local society of the Cham in contemporary Vietnam