Other Research Projects

Contents

1. Conflict Transformation and Religious Actors. A Comparative Study of Indonesia and the Philippines
2. Network culture: social integration in Minangkabau communities
3. Social Identities in Contemporary Inonesia
4. Decentered Theatrical Performances in Cambodia and Thailand
5. Reframing Modernity in Contemporary Indonesia; An Ethnographic Study of Ideas on ‘Center’ and ‘Periphery’ on Sulawesi and Java
6. "Survival strategies among Negrito on Mount Pinatubo after the Volcanic Eruption"

Die Vermarktlichung von Sanden in Kambodscha: globale Vernetzungen, Konflikte und Materialitäten

Sand ist eine Ressource, bei der auf den ersten Blick kaum jemand an Konflikte denkt. Entsprechend ist die Gewinnung von Sand im Kontext der Globalisierung bislang kaum Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher oder öffentlicher Debatten. Doch obwohl Sand auf den ersten Blick weder selten noch wertvoll erscheint, ist er in vielen Regionen der Erde durch Bevölkerungswachstum, Urbanisierung und die Entwicklung von Beton zum meistverwendeten Baustoff geworden und damit zu einer knappen Ressource. In Südostasien, geprägt durch einen exzessiven Bauboom, werden Unmengen von Sand und Kies (Bauaggregate) zur Erstellung von Gebäuden, Infrastruktur, für Landverfüllungen und Landgewinnungen verwendet. Dadurch wird Sand zu einer ökonomisch zunehmend wertvollen Ressource, die in hohen Volumina benötigt, flächenhaft abgebaut und zu steigenden Preisen über weite Distanzen gehandelt wird. Der Sandabbau bleibt dabei nicht ohne Folgen, sondern führt zu teils massiven ökologischen Schäden und daraus resultierenden Konflikten mit betroffenen Bevölkerungsgruppen. Die Inwertsetzung von Sand reiht sich damit ein in Prozesse der Vermarktlichung natürlicher Rohstoffe, die in der Humangeographie unter dem Gesichtspunkt einer „Neoliberalisierung von Natur“ diskutiert werden (Bakker 2010). Entsprechende Studien haben gezeigt, dass marktwirtschaftliche Verwertungslogiken häufig zu negativen sozialen und ökologischen Effekten führen. Gleichzeitig haben sie herausgearbeitet, dass Prozesse und Mechanismen der Vermarktlichung und Neoliberalisierung an unterschiedlichen Orten sehr verschieden ablaufen und zu heterogenen und ambivalenten Effekten führen. Das beantragte Projekt untersucht die entstehenden Konflikte um die Vermarktlichung von Sanden in Kambodscha als konkrete Manifestation marktwirtschaftlicher Prozesse in Interaktion mit materiellen Ressourcen.

Mit Hilfe eines qualitativen und quantitativen Methodensets und unter Rückgriff auf Ansätze der Global Ethnography (Burawoy 2000; Tsing 2005) und des neuen Materialismus (Bakker 2010; Mattissek und Wiertz 2014) werden drei übergreifende Forschungsfragen analysiert:
(1) Welche globalen und regionalen Einflussfaktoren wirken auf die Entstehung und Transformation des südostasiatischen Sandmarktes ein, und wie verändern sich dadurch Handelsrouten und -beziehungen?
(2) Welche Rolle spielen die Akteure, die an der Etablierung des Sandmarktes beteiligt sind oder Widerstand gegen den Abbau und Handel von Sanden leisten? Wie verändern sich ihre jeweiligen Spielräume, Strategien und Praktiken unter dem Einfluss globaler Vernetzungsprozesse?
(3) In welchen Beziehungen stehen die geologischen, biophysischen (nicht-menschlichen) und gesellschaftlichen Prozesse und Entitäten des Sandmarktes und wie beeinflussen sie dessen Eigenschaften und Dynamiken?

A nation state as an actor in the religious field: The Indonesian Ministry of Religion (Kementerian Agama) and the quest for interpretive authority over the Qur’an

The Indonesian Ministry of Religion is an active participant in the country’s Muslim religious discourse by means of publishing an official translation of the Qur’an and an equally official Qur’anic commentary. These works originated in the 1960s and have since been revised repeatedly in ways that reflect the changing political circumstances. Both the translation and the commentary were produced and revised by large committees of scholars which makes Indonesia the first Muslim country to publish authoritative exegetical works that are no longer discernible as the writings of individual scholars. The Qur’an translation by the Ministry of Religion has an extremely broad reach and dominates the market. The printed copies of the Qur’an that are distributed for free by Saudi Arabia also follow this translation, albeit with slight modifications that reflect dogmatic differences.
This project, by analysing the Qur’an translations and commentaries published by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion, aims at contributing to a better understanding of nation states’ quest for gaining interpretive predominance in the field of Muslim exegesis of the Qur’an. Recent research has increasingly acknowledged the fact that nation states and their institutions do not limit themselves to controlling the budgets, structures and staff of religious institutions, but also aim at directly influencing Islamic religious discourses; it is this influence that the project wants to elucidate.

Based on a case study of an official, collectively produced Qur’an translation, the project wants to shed light on the process through which a Muslim-majority state, despite its self-conception as religiously neutral, actively participates in religious discourse; it furthermore looks closely at the contents that this participation produces. By focussing on works that cannot be ascribed to individual scholars any longer, but must rather be seen as products of institutional collective action, it helps to better understand the changing circumstances under which religious authority is constructed in the context of modern nation states.

At the same time, the project wants to contribute, both with respect to content and methodology, to the study of Muslim Qur’an translations in the 20th and 21st centuries, by using the Indonesian case in order to analyse mechanisms of exegetical decision-making. It seeks to determine at which places these decisions become obvious, why this is the case and what impact they have on the understanding of the text. This, in turn, enables us to find out whether, or where, the Ministry of Religion favours specific interpretations, currents of thought or opinions while marginalising others and to what extent, in contrast, it strove to maintain an ostensibly balanced, harmonising or neutral position.

More Information here.

Conflict Transformation and Religious Actors. A Comparative Study of Indonesia and the Philippines

• To what extent and under what conditions have peace and reconciliation efforts by religious actors contributed to conflict transformation in post-conflict communities?  And
• to what extent have these efforts been affected by specific economic, political or social contexts (e.g. constellations of religious groups, socio-economic wellbeing, and local education levels)?

• The first phase entailed a detailed literature review (analysis of the state of the art), a documentation of best practices, and an identification of key findings and lessons (December 2009 - November 2010; Principal researcher: Dr Marcel Baumann).
• The second phase focused on the development and refinement of a methodological concept for empirical field studies (October 2012 – April 2013; Principal researcher: Dr Christian von Lübke).

• The third phase – the actual field study – included the conduct of local survey analyses and in-depth interviews in Maluku/Indonesia and Mindanao/Philippines (April 2015 – October 2016; Principal researchers: Dr Marcel Baumann and Dr Christian von Lübke)

Publication:

• Baumann, Marcel (2013), Kirchliche Beiträge zur nachhaltigen Friedenskonsolidierung in Post-Konflikt-Gesellschaften. Eine Literaturstudie. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Review.

Social Identities in Contemporary Inonesia

“Social Identities in Contemporary Indonesia; a new framework of studying Asia" is a collaborative project, run by a team of researchers from The Australian National University and University of Freiburg, and sponsored by Australia's Group of Eight universities and the German Academic Exchange Service. 

• Lücking, M. & Eliyanah, E. (2017). Images of Authentic Muslim Selves: Gendered Moralities and Constructions of Arab Others in Contemporary Indonesia. Social Sciences, 6(3).
• Downes, M. & Kobbe, P. (2017): Merantau and Minangkabau Modernities: Stories of Mobilities in Prose and Practice. Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Freiburg, Occasional Paper Series No. 35
• Myutel M. & Sandkühler, E. (2017): (In)Visible Ethnicity: Celebrating Chines and Indian Descent in Indonesia.Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Freiburg, Occasional Paper Series No. 36.

Decentered Theatrical Performances in Cambodia and Thailand

This project examines the decentralization and democratization of two major national theatrical traditions, Khon performances in Thailand and Lkhaon Khaol theatre in Cambodia, and to ethnographically place these performances into a cultural dialogue that transcends the categories of Orient and Occident.  To study, as Walter Benjamin suggests, the participatory and democratic role of performative expression, and the decentralization of deeply-nationalized Khon and Lkhaon Khaol performances requires first an ethnographic understanding of how they are centered in Thai and Cambodian National Fine Arts training and state theatre.  These performances are primarily for Thai and Cambodian audiences, on the stages of their respective National Theaters, and the performers are trained within strict theatrical traditions that invoke nationalized mythologies of monarchy, Hinduism, and competing conceptions of Thai/Cambodian identity.  The performances express the ongoing animosity between closely related Thai and Cambodian cultural identities making them statements about the national self as well as the foreign/Western Other.  As the first Westerner engaged in participant-observation of these two contested national theatrical traditions, studying the training and performance of Khon and Lkhaon Khaol within the context of the unprecedented royal transition in Thailand and continued political consolidation in Cambodia will chart innovative ethnographic territory.

This project concentrates on not only how these performances are decentered and democratized in a variety of Thai and Cambodian contexts (including to a limited extent tourist theatre as well as rural performances, media production, and other manifestations within popular culture), but also addressing Southeast Asian views of the West which go beyond Occidentalism.  By exploring the performencer’s and producer’s vision of the West, and the intended cultural messages behind these national theatrical spectacles and their decentered manifestations, the project will address literatures of both decentralization and Occidentalism.  Further methodological innovations make it possible to theorize beyond Occidentalism while exploring an emergent methodology of observant-participation.  With a methodological focus on participatory research, this project will transcend both the disciplinary fictions of the detached observer as well as Thai/Cambodian conceptions of “farang/barang”. With the methodological goal of creating, with Thai and Cambodian collaborators, decentered/democratized performances informed by Khon/Lkhaon Khaol as well as Western musical and theatrical traditions, the ethnography is inserted into a vibrant cultural dialogue between East and West that addresses the ongoing merger of these two constructed categories of imagined difference.

Reframing Modernity in Contemporary Indonesia; An Ethnographic Study of Ideas on ‘Center’ and ‘Periphery’ on Sulawesi and Java

This project intends to investigate how modernity interacts with local practices – or rather how local agents interact with modernity – and will explicitly examine how contemporary Indonesians perceive and act themselves into their cultural existence. The intended fieldwork areas are Yogyakarta, a centre of progressive student activism on Java, and Manado, a Christian region on Sulawesi. The main focus will be on Manado/Minahassa on Sulawesi as it offers a focus on a significant region outside the Indonesian “centre” constituted by the island of Java, which has long been the centre of political policy making and modernizing influences. At the same time, Manado has a distinct history of modernization and political autonomy, and currently is responding to global influences, seemingly distancing itself from Java and the Indonesian capital. These factors suggest that an ethnographic investigation in the regions may offer new and different insights not only into current changes occurring in Indonesia but also into broader theoretical issues.

The project will identify specific social groups across sections of social strata in both rural and urban contexts in Java and Sulawesi. The main research questions are:

1. What do research participants regard as “Self?” Which significant “Others” do they identify? What is the primary focus for those concerned with foreign influence?
2. How do people see the “Foreign?” And how is it connected to everyday actual behavior?
3. What operates as the Indonesian “Centre” in framing the attitudes of research participants?
4. What is seen as modernity? How is modernity characterized? What is seen as the western, eastern, and global world? What is the perceived relationship between the West and modernity?
5. How do people discuss modernity? How does the discussion differ between people in Yogyakarta and Manado?

"Survival strategies among Negrito on Mount Pinatubo after the Volcanic Eruption"

The project examined the various survival strategies of the Aeta in Zambales, Philippines, a marginal group who were hit directly by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo Volcano in 1991. The research program studied how their traditional economic and social behaviour in some measure determined their adaptation to the radically altered physical environment, as well as how the extent and intensity of interethnic interaction with the lowland population worked in the period of incipient consolidation and gradual stabilization after the dramatic changes.