scholarly journals Pocong: Contemporary Zombie Stories in Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 354-369
Author(s):  
Marina V. Frolova

The paper about the Indonesian “zombie” pocong examines specific features of the ghost stories in Indonesia, tracks the etymology of the words hantu (“ghost,” “undead”) and pocong (“wrapped in shroud”), and includes a translation of a typical ghost story (“Pocong and a Cart Hawker”). It introduces the hitherto understudied material in Russia that counts only a small number of Indonesian and Anglophone works. The aims of this paper include collecting data about this mythological creature from Indonesian sources, studying the image of pocong and contemporary narratives about him, searching his closest parallels in the world folklore, and interpreting the meanings of the character discovered in modern Indonesian culture. For religious people, pocong is a symbol of the frailty of life. Some traditional Muslims in modern Indonesia practice pocong related rituals (“Pocong’s oath,” pesugihan). Nowadays, the image of pocong is demythologized as it circulates in urban flesh-mobs, pranks, and horror films. The typology of this scary image is surprisingly similar not to Muslim genies but to from Chinese hopping vampires. Modern zombie studies shed light on the genealogy of pocong as a walking dead. Todd K. Platts discusses the spectrum of potential underpinnings of the zombie that include racism, terrorism, class inequality, disintegration of a nuclear family, consumer culture etc that may be applied to pocong as well. Pocong symbolizes oppressed common folk and this image is frequently used in mass political protests. Interpretation of pocong as a marginalized figure is relevant for the folklore studies in Indonesia, as well as for the study of horror-discourse in general.

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-254
Author(s):  
Kevin Stewart Rose

ABSTRACTThis article examines the spirituality reflected in the 1976 cookbook More-with-Less. Written by a former Mennonite missionary hoping to provide religious households with a practical way to respond to world hunger, the cookbook's message of a simple diet that could transform users' influence on the world is an early example of the religious environmentalism that has grown increasingly popular among middle-class American Protestants in the last several decades. By examining its historical context, narrating its genesis, and critically assessing the spirituality it recommended, this article argues that the cookbook provides a useful window into Protestant environmental spirituality, its version of which allowed practitioners to maintain traditional institutional relationships and conceptions of the divine while cultivating the individuated religiosity increasingly sought after in modern culture. Emerging in the institutional overlap of traditional religious organizations and the putatively secular formations of mass media, globalization, and consumer culture, the cookbook leveraged the incipient emphasis on lifestyle choices within consumer culture to craft an individuated response to a vision of the world in permanent crisis. More-with-Less and the Protestant environmental spirituality it represents shed light on current scholarly debates about the form religion takes within modern contexts of secularity, especially when religious practitioners seek adaptations that can maintain traditional theological and organizational commitments.


2009 ◽  
Vol 0 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Matthias Bickenbach

Hideo Nakata's film version of THE RING sets up a remarkable constellation of technical and spiritualist media that has re-established the genre of psycho-horror films. The film is not just about a ghost story but, unlike the novels by Kôji Suzuki, about a primeval scene of the fear of media that initiates the eventuation of a "video curse", thereby raising the issue of the technology of fear as a history of media.


According to a long historical tradition, understanding comes in different varieties. In particular, it is said that understanding people has a different epistemic profile than understanding the natural world—it calls on different cognitive resources, for instance, and brings to bear distinctive normative considerations. Thus in order to understand people we might need to appreciate, or in some way sympathetically reconstruct, the reasons that led a person to act in a certain way. By comparison, when it comes to understanding natural events, like earthquakes or eclipses, no appreciation of reasons or acts of sympathetic reconstruction is arguably needed—mainly because there are no reasons on the scene to even be appreciated, and no perspectives to be sympathetically pieced together. In this volume some of the world’s leading philosophers, psychologists, and theologians shed light on the various ways in which we understand the world, pushing debates on this issue to new levels of sophistication and insight.


1897 ◽  
Vol s8-XI (278) ◽  
pp. 338-338
Author(s):  
C. F. S. Warren
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Victor Crochet ◽  
Marcus Gustafsson

Abstract Discontentment is growing such that governments, and notably that of China, are increasingly providing subsidies to companies outside their jurisdiction, ‘buying their way’ into other countries’ markets and undermining fair competition therein as they do so. In response, the European Union recently published a proposal to tackle such foreign subsidization in its own market. This article asks whether foreign subsidies can instead be addressed under the existing rules of the World Trade Organization, and, if not, whether those rules allow States to take matters into their own hands and act unilaterally. The authors shed light on these issues and provide preliminary guidance on how to design a response to foreign subsidization which is consistent with international trade law.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110024
Author(s):  
Murielle El Hajj

The texts of Leslie Kaplan question the irreducible opposition between the real and the non-real. Her characters and their intentional absence confuse the repository and fictional worlds, not only to point out the thin margin between reality and fiction, but to underline the impossible delimitation between the real and the fictional, or even between the text and the world. This article studies the characters of Kaplan and aims to demonstrate their identity crisis through the study of their literary onomastic and the use of the neutral pronoun ‘it’ and allegoric expressions. In addition, the objective of this article is to shed light on the Kaplanian characters as Kunderian models, while stressing the particularity of their physionomy, which consists to present ‘fuzzy’ characters that are present and absent at the same time, engaging the reader in the fictional process as a try to complete the missing details. This article concludes that the Kaplanian characters are not only the prototypes of the postmodern being, but they are also introverted, psychopaths and a demonstration of different facets of the unconscious.


Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianna Fotaki ◽  
Kate Kenny ◽  
Sheena J. Vachhani

Affect holds the promise of destabilizing and unsettling us, as organizational subjects, into new states of being. It can shed light on many aspects of work and organization, with implications both within and beyond organization studies. Affect theory holds the potential to generate exciting new insights for the study of organizations, theoretically, methodologically and politically. This Special Issue seeks to explore these potential trajectories. We are pleased to present five contributions that develop such ideas, drawing on a wide variety of approaches, and invoking new perspectives on the organizations we study and inhabit. As this Special Issue demonstrates, the world of work offers an exciting landscape for studying the ‘pulsing refrains of affect’ that accompany our lived experiences.


Daphnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-84
Author(s):  
Sabine Seelbach

Abstract This article presents the project “Virtual Benedictine library Millstatt” (www.virtbibmillstatt.com/), which is dedicated to the cultural memory and educational history of Carinthia in the broadest sense. It aims to reconstruct the hitherto little-known and little-researched corpus of manuscripts from the Benedictine Abbey of Millstatt, to identify its texts, and to shed light on their history of use. Against the background of the eventful history of ownership of the Millstatt library, the problems that arise when trying to reliably assign manuscripts scattered around the world to the Millstatt corpus are outlined. Examples will be used to show the extent to which external features (binding, signature system, accessories), but also text-internal indications, make the origin and ownership history of the manuscripts traceable. Spectacular new finds are presented, but also erroneous assumptions about the affiliation of certain texts to the reading canon of the Millstatt Benedictines are pointed out.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Vita Elysia ◽  
Ake Wihadanto

Local Government of Magelang Regency initiates the Sister Village Program after Mount Merapi Eruption in 2010. The idea of this program is to connect villages at risk from Merapi eruption to partner villages with less risk in the surrounding regions. This program is part of post-disaster recovery initiatives at the local level which includes planned evacuation routes, shelters, provision of food and other daily essentials. This paper aims to shed light on the role of sister village program in promoting community resilience after the volcanic eruption of Merapi. It is found that the system of sister village program can fulfill many aspects of community resilience components. Considering Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, this program should be regarded as a good example to be replicated in other prone areas in the country.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Sparks

Scientific warnings about climate change continue as climate disasters strike all around the world. There is increasing public support for climate mitigation policies, and major mass protests shed light on the issue. How does climate change impact increase climate activism? I build on a conventional understanding of activism by adding the insight of construal level theory. When climate change is experienced more directly, people are more likely to act because they care more and can link concern to specific actions. Among a sample of Californians (MTurk; n = 604) as climate was perceived as more proximate, respondents were more likely to take action. A survey-experiment conducted using a US sample (MTurk; n = 609) demonstrated that as issues become more psychologically proximate, respondents were more likely to take political action. These results suggest that organizers can activate proximity to mobilize supporters.


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