The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia

Description

Part of the "Asian Studies Association of Australia" series, this collection covers an important area of cultural and social history in Indonesia. The pieces link the death practices of so-called tribal groups with historical changes in Indonesia, from on-going changes in Islam to the roles of forms of modernity. It is a work of history, anthropology and religious study all in one, exploring how "The present informs the past, as much as the past explains the present."

HENRI CHAMBERT-LOIR represented the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient in Jakarta for fifteen years, and is now in Paris as a senior research fellow with that institute. He edited (with Claude Guillot), Le Culte des Saints dans le Monde Musulman (1995). Anthony Reid took his BA and MA from Victoria University of Wellington, and his Ph.D in History at Cambridge University in 1965. He is currently Professor of Southeast Asian History at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. He has taught in Malaysia, Indonesia, and at Yale University in the USA. ANTHONY REID is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA, Los Angeles. His books include Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, c. 1450-1680 (2 vols, 1988-93).