Between Unity and Diversity: The Construction of the Indonesian Nation

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Meuleman

AbstractThis article studies the process of nation-building in Indonesia. Using a historical approach for the analysis of what is portrayed as a nonlinear, long-term process, it discusses relevant developments during the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras, with particular attention to the New Order and most recent periods. The analysis focuses on the complex relations between unity and diversity and highlights the multiplicity of frame-works within which inhabitants of the present Republic of Indonesia have constituted their identities, including national, transnational and subnational ones. Two questions that receive particular attention are the role of religion and the relations between the centre and various parts of the country. The article argues that various factors, including religion and ethnicity, have contributed to nation-building in specific circumstances, but have had contrary effects under other conditions. It also shows that progress and regression in nation-building has partially been the voluntary or involuntary effect of the tactical use governments and other political actors have made of manifold communal differences. It adds that the identity of Indonesian citizens becomes increasingly complex and trans- as well as subnational components increasingly important, but that this does not automatically imply the end of the nation-building process.

Author(s):  
Ifansyah Putra

This study aims to explain the role of religion and ethnicity in winning political actors in the Bengkulu provincial elections, and the effectiveness of the role of religion and ethnicity in winning the candidate. Using political marketing theory, religion and ethnicity are packed into the backdrop of winning political actors. The positioning attitude and branding strategy that is right and mature, raises the political image in getting the sympathy of the community. The result of the research shows that first, the victory of Ridwan Mukti and Rohidin Mersyah have several factors, namely to do the right strategy positioning (candidate compactness, academic degree, mission vision and work program priority, politics politics, cultural preservation, not compartmentalization, harmonization of political elite, and uphold togetherness). Second, religion and ethnicity still as a strategy, but not dominant, its use is based only on the integrity of political actors, by packing Ridwan Mukti and Rohidin Mersyah as political actors who have both values. Thirdly, the principle of primordialism has decreased its effectiveness, so that to be used as the main strategy in electoral politics, especially Bengkulu Province Head Election, no longer has a significant impact like the previous year


Author(s):  
Joanne van Dijk

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the role of religion and ethnicity in providing social support for elderly Dutch Canadian Catholic and Calvinist parents and in establishing ethno-religious retirement and long-term care facilities. The data come from a 1995 survey of elderly Dutch Canadian immigrants (N = 79) and their adult children (N = 364) examining intraethnic differences in ethnic persistence and parent care. Continuity theory provides the theoretical framework for this study. In the last few decades, second generation Dutch Calvinist immigrants have been busy establishing retirement and long-term care facilities to look after the needs of the older Calvinist generation. Dutch Catholic immigrants have established very few retirement and nursing homes for their elderly members. Ethnic and religious differences influence the kind of support available to elderly Dutch Canadians.


2002 ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Z.V. Shved

Over the last decade, interest in the heritage of such national thinkers who have worked in the space of sociocultural and religious studies has become relevant. That is why, in our opinion, the appeal to Vyacheslav Lipynsky's creative work is justified. Today, his legacy can be used not only to understand the history of society and the state, but also to understand some aspects of our present. Therefore, you should listen more carefully to the thoughts of this thinker.


Author(s):  
Mirjam Künkler

This article provides an overview of Böckenförde’s writings on issues of religion, ethos, and the Catholic Church in relation to law, democracy, and the state. It presents Böckenförde as an inner-Catholic critic, who attempted to persuade Catholicism that one’s own freedom can be defended only as part of the general freedom. This was finally achieved, at least dogmatically according to Böckenförde, with the Declaration of Religious Freedom at the end of the Second Vatican Council. The article lays out how Böckenförde sees the role of religion and natural law in secular democracy, namely as one informing the citizens’ ethos. Democracy cannot survive in the long term unless it is carried out by people who consider themselves part of the same demos and work towards a shared democratic culture. The article includes information on his intellectual biography, a periodization of his academic writings in seven phases from 1957 to 2012, a discussion of some of his core arguments as an inner-Catholic critic, a reflection on the cover images he chose for the two volumes, and closes with concluding remarks on Böckenförde’s view of religion in democracy compared to other theorists of democracy and secularism.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-612
Author(s):  
Luca Ozzano

AbstractThis article is part of a special issue on the five Muslim democracies. It aims at understanding the role played by religion, and particularly by religiously oriented actors, in Turkey's democratization processes. The first section analyzes the different theoretical approaches to the role of religion in democratization. The second section analyzes the different phases of Turkey's political history since the 1980 coup, taking into account both democratization processes and the role played by religious actors in the political system, and trying to understand the possible relations between the two phenomena.


Exchange ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

Abstract This contribution explores the interaction between religion and politics in a religiously plural and ethnically multidimensional Zambian context. Given the political salience of both religion and ethnicity in Zambian politics, this research locates an understudied aspect in the discourse on religion and politics in Zambia, namely the multiple relations between religion, ethnicity and politics. It specifically offers a historical-theological analysis of the implications that the political mobilisation of religion has for ecumenism in Zambia since Edgar Chagwa Lungu became the country’s president (2015-2018). Underlining the church-dividing potential of non-theological (doctrinal) factors, the article argues that the ‘political mobilisation of religion’ and the ‘pentecostalisation of Christianity’ in Zambia are reshaping the country’s ecumenical landscapes. Accordingly, this contribution posits the significance of ecumenical consciousness among churches and argues for a contextual ecumenical ecclesiology.


1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Jordan ◽  
John P. Renninger

What is Africa doing wrong? Africans as well as others are increasingly asking this question. We are, in effect, invited to consider that there are, perhaps, negative as well as positive aspects to the nation-building process in post-colonial Africa. To the layman, indeed, the image of Africa has tended to accentuate the negative. The strife in the Congo during the early 1960s, the civil war in Nigeria, numerous military coups d'etat and political assassinations, bureaucratic corruption, disappointing progress in the economic field, and more recently famine and drought, all could lead to the conclusion that efforts at nationbuilding have been less than successful.


Itinerario ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Karina Hestad Skeie

The plural and particularised expressions of colonialism remain a central concern for post-colonial studies. This paper will discuss the role of the Norwegian Lutheran mission in colonial Madagascar in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The case of a Protestant mission from a small European country operating in a French colony provides an interesting opportunity to explore the implications of inter-European dynamics in colonial politics and the role of religion in the relationships between missionaries, colonial subjects, and colonial powers.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriaan van Klinken

Building upon debates about the politics of nationalism and sexuality in post-colonial Africa, this article highlights the role of religion in shaping nationalist ideologies that seek to regulate homosexuality. It specifically focuses on Pentecostal Christianity in Zambia, where the constitutional declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation has given rise to a form of ‘Pentecostal nationalism’ in which homosexuality is considered to be a threat to the purity of the nation and is associated with the Devil. The article offers an analysis of recent Zambian public debates about homosexuality, focusing on the ways in which the ‘Christian nation’ argument is deployed, primarily in a discourse of anti-homonationalism, but also by a few recent dissident voices. The latter prevent Zambia, and Christianity, from accruing a monolithic depiction as homophobic. Showing that the Zambian case presents a mobilisation against homosexuality that is profoundly shaped by the local configuration in which Christianity defines national identity – and in which Pentecostal-Christian moral concerns and theo-political imaginations shape public debates and politics – the article nuances arguments that explain African controversies regarding homosexuality in terms of exported American culture wars, proposing an alternative reading of these controversies as emerging from conflicting visions of modernity in Africa.1


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document