Alexander Horstmann

Faith in the Future

Revitalization of religious and cultural traditions is taking place in nearly all contemporary Asian societies and beyond. Faith in the Future: Understanding the Revitalization of Religions and Cultural Traditions in Asia provides a comparative analysis of the key features and aspirations of revitalization movements and assesses their scope for shaping the future trajectories of societies in all parts of the world.

Editorial : Grenzregionen und Border Studies in Südostasien = Borderlands and Border Studies in South-East Asia

The present ASEAS issue presents current work on borderlands and border studies in South-East Asia. It concentrates on different facets and approaches to highlight the contributions of this emerging field to the social sciences. The contributors find border studies a powerful tool to deconstruct the geographical demarcations and national ideology of the nation state and to question a perspective that implicitly accepts and reconfirms the nation by limiting itself to the study of social transformations inside a country. Borderlands have their own specific political spaces in which citizenship, law, and sovereignties are contested. While they are integrated into nation states, governments’ rule is being negotiated there – not least by the local elites and government offiDie vorliegende ASEAS-Ausgabe bietet eine Ubersicht uber aktuelle Forschungsarbeiten zum Thema Grenzregionen und Border Studies in Sudostasien. Unterschiedliche Aspekte und theoretische Zugange werden prasentiert und heben die Bedeutung dieses neu entstandenen Feldes fur die Sozialwissenschaften hervor. Die AutorInnen sehen in Border Studies ein wertvolles Instrument zur Dekonstruktion geografischer Grenzen und nationalstaatlicher Ideologie. Es erlaubt Perspektiven zu hinterfragen, die das Konzept der Nation implizit akzeptieren und bestatigen, indem sie sich auf die Erforschung sozialer Transformationen innerhalb eines Landes beschranken. Grenzgebiete verfugen uber eigene spezifische politische Raume, in denen Staatsangehorigkeit, Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Souveranitat angefochten Editorial: Grenzregionen und Border Studies in Sudostasien / Borderlands and Border Studies in South-East Asia

The Post-Modern Shift. Introduction

As in other parts of the world, a deep sense of displacement, insecurity and cultural crisis has been provoked in Southeast Asia by the capitalist transfor mation of local economies and the erosion of relatively secure traditional social and value systems in the wake of globalisation. New forms of religiosity have arisen in response to the challenges of a new and increasingly post-modern way of life. In this special issue we explore how the innovative features of new forms of religiosity reflect peoples changing personal and social needs under the condition of an increasingly urbanised and globalised life experience. Some of the defining socio-cultural features of the modern and, more so, the post-modern experience include a profound sense of social isolation or lack of community, a growing individualism and consumerism, heightened exposure to cultural difference through the electronic media and increased human mobility, together with an unprecedented degree of cultural and reli gious self-awareness at the level of local society. These factors can generate a perceived need for strengthening local traditions, while also seeking to adjust and adapt these traditions to the demands of greater global interdependence and a more self-conscious sense of identity. Peoples attitude towards local traditions, however, is not shaped by cultural factors alone. The revitalisations of local religious identities that are currently taking place in many parts of Southeast Asia are also pragmatic and strategic responses to a growing sense of disenfranchisement which stems from the misappropriation of local material resources and from assaults on local systems of moral and political authority by the nation-state or by multinational capitalism. In this special issue, the contributors, thus, seek to shed light on the revi talisation of local traditions and the emergence of new forms of religiosity while paying particular attention to the processes of social change in which these new forms of religiosity are embedded. In contemporary Southeast Asia, a sense of cultural crisis and fragmentation has been felt with particularly acuteness, generating demand for innovative or transformative ideas about a

Building Noah's ark for migrants, refugees, and religious communities

Introduction: Refugees and Religion Alexander Horstmann and Jin-Heon Jung PART I 1. What is a Refugee Religion? Exile, Exodus and Emigration in the Vietnamese Diaspora Janet Hoskins 2. Religious Imaginary as an Alternative Social and Moral Order: Karen Buddhism across the Thai-Burma Border Mikael Gravers 3. Refugee and Religious Narratives: The Conversion of North Koreans from Refugees to Gods Warriors Jin-Heon Jung 4. Ritual Practice, Material Culture, and Wellbeing in Displacement: Ka-thow-bow in a Karenni Refugee Camp in Thailand Sandra Dudley PART II 5. Secular and Religious Sanctuaries: Interfaces of Humanitarianism and Self-Government of Karen Refugee-Migrants in Thai Burmese Border Spaces Alexander Horstmann 6. Conflicting Missions? The Politics of Evangelical Humanitarianism in the Sahrawi and Palestinian Protracted Refugee Situations Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 7. Humanitarian Adhocracy, Transnational New Apostolic Missions, and Evangelical Anti-Dependency in a Haitian Refugee Camp Elizabeth McAlister PART III 8. Palestinian Steadfastness as a Mission Leonardo Schiocchet 9. Conversion and Community among Iu Mien Refugee Immigrants in the United States Hjorleifur Jonsson 10. Faith in Ethnicity: The Homeland Ties and Diasporic Formation of Vietnamese Caodaists in the United States and Cambodia Thien-Huong Ninh

Secular and Religious Sanctuaries: Interfaces of Humanitarianism and Self-Government of Karen Refugee-Migrants in Thai-Burmese Border Spaces

The paper looks at the entanglement of humanitarian organizations, secular and religious, with social support networks and the role of these networks for the survival, protection, and conflict avoidance of Karen villagers in devastated eastern Burma.1 This critical perspective on a public space for Karen refugees, humanitarianism from below, or self-government can be fruitfully compared and juxtaposed with the recent work of James C. Scott in which he follows up an old interest in power, domination, and the arts of resisting the repressive state (1990, 2009).2 In following up religious missionary and secular human rights humanitarian structures in the borderlands, I hope to cover structures of power that otherwise would remain largely invisible, operating as they do under the radar of the state. The chapter also argues against a too neat distinction between the secular and the religious, as both spaces are overlapping in humanitarian assistance from below.

Introduction: Refugees and Religion

In recent decades, millions of people have fled war, famine, and disaster. Humanitarian aid provided by missionary networks or professional relief organizations has become increasingly important. Under hostile circumstances that make it impossible to return home, stateless migrants and refugees often depend on religious congregations and missionary networks, with their ability to reach areas and fulfill needs unreached and unmet by other humanitarian organizations, to prepare and develop the routes and imaginaries that they travel (Levitt 2007). In this book, we follow up exciting work on migration and religion by Peggy Levitt and others to show the centrality of religion in the home- and placemaking of vulnerable refugees who have fled humanitarian crises and natural disasters (cf. Lubkemann 2002). Our thesis is that religion is believed to provide a sanctuary and space of relief for vulnerable people, to be a “compass” and itinerary” in the words of Thomas Tweed (2006), and to be a lens for understanding the kinetics of homemaking in often hostile environments. But religion is more than just a relief from suffering or a source of hope. Rather than enabling avoidance or denial, it can be an integral part of refugees’ public space making (Horstmann 2014).

Chapter One Religious and Cultural Revitalization: A Post-Modern Phenomenon?

New ways of practising and thinking about religion and tradition have emerged in response to the challenges of this new way of life and this chapter explore some of their innovative, post-modern features. The defining features of the late modern socio-cultural experience include a profound sense of social isolation or lack of community, growing individualism and consumerism, heightened exposure to cultural difference through increased mobility and electronic media, together with an unprecedented degree of cultural and religious self-awareness at the level of local society. Traditional elements of religion and culture are involved in an intensive dialogue with national and global power-knowledge formations, and are thus manifesting as a force for cultural and social innovation. This chapter presents csae studies, it emphasizes the local cultures and religions are undergoing a deep transformation and that, in many cases, cultural and religious boundaries are becoming more pronounced as a result.Keywords:cultural revitalization; post-modern phenomenon; religious; social innovation