My work as
an anthropologist (for a C.V. click
here) has focused primarily on Southeast Asia, specifically
Indonesia where
I have done fieldwork and taught: the Priangan area of West Java
(1970-72),
Aceh (1980-82), East Java and Madura (1989-93, 2004), and the Banten
area of
West Java (1996).
Although over the years my interests have varied the main focus of
my
research has been on belief systems and symbolic representations as
these
relate to daily life, both how these can be understood in their own
right and
in the light of anthropological explanations. I’ve written a book on
beliefs
about tigers in Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia) and a major paper
on
Javanese spirit beliefs was published in 2006 (Crossroads vol. 18, #1).
More and more I have been asking how communities symbolically define
themselves through the interlocking and sometimes conflicting stories
that
their participants tell and accept as reality. Recently I have looked
at how
perceptions of myths are shaped by the media and how the influence of
the
latter varies with the location of the community and its local
concerns. I
presented a paper on this topic at the 14th Workshop of the
European
Social Science Java Network (ESSJN), Salatiga/Yogyakarta 12-15 January
2005
(for the ESSJN see: http://www.ceas.gu.se/essjn/).
At the same time, the movement
of mythologies into the new niches created by film, television, and the
Internet provides them with a non-local space in which their veracity
does not
depend on local icons. This releases them from local constraints and
makes it
possible for them to be recombined with other beliefs. Work on this
topic is on-going.
In
October
2007
I
participated
in
an experimental seminar on ritual at the Royal
Holloway,
University of London where we explored how far a ritual can be taken
out of its
context without losing its original meaning.