Morality on the Digital Edge: Social Media Usage and Religious Authority among Indonesian Muslim School Girls

Abstract

Across the Muslim world, the rise of new media and, in particular, the Internet, is credited with having allowed for a greater number and variety of participants in debates about Islamic normativity. This paper is an analysis of digital literacy, religious authority, and morality in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools for girls. I argue that these young women occupy a “digital double-edge”— their (limited) access to the digital world offers cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial opportunities while also exposing them to gendered scrutiny for their engagement with the morally murky space of the Internet. Within the study of Islam and new media, I argue that greater attention to everyday decision-making surrounding what to post, “like,” and share reveals new spaces where young Muslim women lay subtle claim to religious authority as they engage and interpret alternative messages about Islam and gender that they encounter online.

Speaker’s Bio

Claire-Marie Hefner is a cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral scholar of Islamic studies in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. She is currently developing her book manuscript, Achieving Islam: Women, Piety, and Moral Play in Indonesian Muslim Boarding Schools, an ethnographic study of moral learning and women’s achievement in Yogyakarta.

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The Cultivation of Customary Law in Indonesia’s Political Forests

ABSTRACT of the Speaker:

The forests of Indonesia have long been a space of political confrontation. Rich in timber, water, and mineral deposits, they are home to an estimated 40 million people in forest- dependent customary law communities. This paper focuses on the contemporary remnants of colonial- era policies in forest law in Indonesia and how, over its seven decades of rule, the Indonesian state has slowly undermined its own power in these spaces. In particular, this paper explores the way that the confusing, conflicting, and corrupt statutory legal system in Indonesia has undermined itself and its own power over the “political” forests of Indonesia. Contributing to the current literature on legal pluralism, indigenous politics, and land conflicts, I explore how this process has contributed to the persistence of customary law in Indonesia. In order to do this, I use the case study of the Kasepuhan customary law community in West Java and Banten provinces on the island of Java, Indonesia. The historicizing of statutory and customary forest law in Indonesia highlights the limits of state legal ambiguity before citizens start turning away from statutory law and, in this case, look for stability in customary law (or adat in Indonesia) in order to govern everyday life.

SPEAKER

Rebakah Daro Minarchek, Ph.D (Assistant Teaching Professor in the Integrated Social Sciences program and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington)

CLICK FLYER TO REGISTER

The Long Red Thread: Indonesia’s Infrastructure of Impunity from 1965 to the Present

Co-sponsored by the Rutgers International Institute for Peace, the American Institute for Indonesian Studies, and the New York Southeast Asian Network

Background

Impunity is not simply a legal process, it permeates the social, political, legal and cultural contexts. Understanding the repeated performance of impunity as an infrastructure discloses how a number of dynamic systems intersect to compound impunity over time and space. Prof. Drexler will explore how victims, family members, and activists persistently demand justice (most often defined in legal terms) despite repeated failures to achieve accountability and consider how their consistent and creative demands may ultimately subvert the infrastructure in the realm of affect rather than truth and law. 

Speaker: Elizabeth F. Drexler, Director, Peace and Justice Studies and Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University

Speaker’s Bio:

ELIZABETH F. DREXLER is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Peace and Justice Studies. She has been working in Indonesia since 1996 focusing on issues of human rights and state violence. Her research explores how societies address the legacies of political violence, emphasizing the relationships among institutions, transnational interventions, historical narratives, and contested memories in establishing the rule of law and reconstructing social and political life—or failing to do so. She is particularly concerned with the role that knowledge of past violence, whether acknowledged or denied, plays in the present. She is currently working on a monograph, tentatively titled “Infrastructures of Impunity: Millennials and Affective Engagement with New Order Violence in Indonesia” which critiques the belief that documenting history and past state crimes leads to non-repetition, and it demonstrates that affective dimensions of the disclosures of past violence color the social and political present. This work pays particular attention to how youth are engaged and invoked by differently positioned actors and advocates and how youth themselves contribute to knowledge and memory projects about authoritarian violence. Additional research explores current developments in human rights discourse, norms and practice in Indonesia through the lens of criminalization and irregularities of law enforcement. In an ongoing research project, Drexler is exploring the visual and artistic representations of intersectional experiences of structural injustice in the United States. She is the author of the award-winning Aceh, Indonesia: Securing the Insecure State (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, awarded the Cecil B. Currey Book Award).

Register here: https://rutgers.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lcpbxoPpQKi1_11C3q8OrQ

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Wayangan Tunggal Ki Purbo Asmoro | Doa Untuk Dunia (With English Translation)

A rebroadcast of Ki Purbo Asmoro renowned "Wayangan Tunggal" performance from the beginning of the pandemic, when he performed solo, with no musicians or singers.

Many of you requested the English translation and commentary of this performance, and you will find a simultaneous translation and commentary (sponsored by AIFIS) here on this occasion!

The performance with English translation will continue to be available after these live re-streamings.

Watch below:

Creativity in the Era of Covid-19—Lockdowns and Solutions

This webinar is meant to simply help gather information for further research into Ki Purbo Asmoro’s creative processes and thinking during this unusual time. Kitsie has been interviewing Ki Purbo Asmoro for 16 years, and their question and answer interactions are understandably somewhat in a pattern. In her future writings regarding Ki Purbo Asmoro’s work during this pandemic, she hopes to include a wider range of consideration that is inspired by a variety of “question-ers” who probably think differently than she does, and she believes that this panel might provide that. She will always ask permission before ultimately using anything that is said by any party during this webinar. Anyone else in the panel is also granted full permission to use anything in their work, as long as they receive permission from Ki Purbo Asmoro and the speaker they wish to quote. We hope this will be a relaxed and fun two hours, listening to how Ki Purbo Asmoro thinks and what he thinks about! 

Watch below:

IGSSCI Culture Technology and Social Transformation in the Quest for Human Dignity

The International Graduate Students and Scholars' Conference in Indonesia (IGSSCI) is an annual forum for academicians, researchers and practitioners to exchange knowledge and information in the broad area socio-cultural, religious, science and technology. The event has a pivotal role in improving research linkages in this region.

This conference invites graduate students and scholars who are doing research or interested in Indonesian issues to present their paper. The presenters from different disciplines of knowledge related to the subthemes are allowed to participate.

For more info: https://igsci.pasca.ugm.ac.id/

International Symposium on the Languages of Java

The island of Java is home to several major world languages. Javanese—spoken mainly in Central and East Java— is the world’s 10th or 11th largest language in number of native speakers. It has one of the oldest and fullest recorded histories of any Austronesian language. It also has been of considerable interest to scholars because of its unique speech level system. Sundanese—spoken in West Java— has over 27 million speakers, and Madurese—spoken on the neighboring island of Madura and throughout parts of East Java—is the third largest local language, with up to 13 million speakers. Geography, history, and typology bind these languages with linguistically related languages on the neighboring islands of Bali and Lombok. Each of these languages displays a range of dialects, isolects, continua, and contact varieties and yet they have received relatively little attention from linguists. With this symposium, we offer an opportunity for scholars working on any aspect of Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Balinese, Sasak, or any non-Malay language spoken on these islands, to come together and share their findings. We aim to encourage and promote continued research on these important and unique languages.

Activity, Date, and Venue

AIFS in coperation with Universitas Negeri Malang, University of Oslo, and University of Maryland will conduct this event on:

Date : 20-22 May 2021

Time : 07.00-21.00 (different time zones)

Venue : online, via Zoom

Keynote Speakers

Ika Nurhayani is an Associate Professor and the head of the Linguistics Master Program at the Department of Language and Literature, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Universitas

Brawijaya. She received a Fulbright scholarship in 2008 and graduated from the Department of Linguistics, Cornell University, in 2013. Her research focuses primarily on Javanese phonology and syntax.

Carly Sommerlot recently completed her PhD from University of Texas at Arlington, USA with a dissertation entitled “On the Syntax of West Kalimantan: Asymmetries and A'-movement in Malayic and Land Dayak languages”. She has conducted fieldwork in western Indonesia. Currently she is an academic staff the University of Texas, Arlington, in the Linguistics and TESOL Department.

For more info:

ISLOJ: https://indoling.com/isloj/isloj-8/

ISMIL: https://indoling.com/ismil/ismil-24/

Learning to Navigate the Ethics of Boundaries: Schools, Youth, and Inter-Religious Relationships in North Sulawesi

To enhance the academic atmosphere during the covid-19 pandemic and to support our mission in promoting academic and research collaboration among scholars, The American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) and the Center for Area Studies-Indonesia Institute of Science (LIPI) as the biggest research institute in Indonesia will jointly organize a monthly webinar on Southeast Asian studies. This monthly webinar discusses various topics related to Southeast Asian studies include religion studies, education, politics, society, ecology, culture, and so on.

The webinar is conducted in English, open for the public; broadcasted through LIPI YouTube channel. It is usually held with the first 45 minutes for power point presentation and the rest for discussion.

ORGANIZER AND DATE

This event is jointly organized by AIFIS and Center for Area Studies-LIPI and will be conducted on:

Date                : Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Time : 2.30 – 4.30 PM (Jakarta Time/GMT+7:00)

ABSTRACT of the Speaker:

In this talk, I considers the complex conjunction of ethical frames that youth in majority-Protestant North Sulawesi are exposed to from the national and local political debates, religious teachings, and their social experiences at school that shape their understandings of and approaches toward inter-religious boundaries. In response to national concerns about the moral failings of Indonesian youth and social issues like rising religious intolerance, the revised 2013 Curriculum promised an increased focus on character and religious education. Educational goals toward developing social competencies in youth, including tolerance, have translated into strong imperatives for youth to acquire friends from various religious backgrounds. At the same time, as youth consider possibilities for dating and marriage, Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic religious education courses all stress the importance of marrying someone from the same religious background. In North Sulawesi, inter-religious marriages are often cited as providing a framework of tolerance that sustains harmonious inter-religious relations in the region. On the other hand, discourses about the threat of inter-religious marriages and their association with proselytization also inform fears of religious conversion a de-stabilization of identities. I demonstrate how two broad ethical frames used to make sense of inter-religious encounters depend on alternate understandings of personhood and subjectivity as either individualized or community-oriented.

Online registration can be accessed via the registration page below:

Register here
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Binding Contestation: How Party-Military Relations Influence Democratization

The American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) & The Jusuf Kalla School of Government -UMY will jointly organize a Online Seminar. The parties supporting the seminar included AIFIS, Faculty of Law, Master of Law, Doctoral Program in Political-Islamic Political Science, and Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, UM Jakarta. The international seminar will discuss the implementation of democracy which continues to experience new paradigm developments. The big theme raised in the international seminar series was "Contestations That Bind: How Party-Military Relationships Affect Democratization".

An international seminar will be held on Monday, February 15, 2021, at 08.30 - 10.30 WIB online via the zoom application. In addition, the event presented three speakers from academia who were concerned about the major themes of the seminar, including Sunarno. SH., M.Hum., Ph.D (Dept. Law, Yogyakarta Muhammadiyah University), Darin Self (Dept. of Government, Cornell University, USA), Dr. Maimun Murod-AlBarbasy (Dean of Fac Social & Poliitics Sciences, Muhammadiyah University Jakarta). In addition, the international seminar will be moderated by UMY Masters of Governmental Science Lecturers, Eko Priyo Purnomo, M.Res., Ph.D., who is also a senior researcher at Jusuf Kalla School of Governance.

Online registration can be accessed via the registration page below:

Register here
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AIFIS-RISTEK/BRIN ACADEMIC WRITING FOR INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATION: A VIRTUAL WORKSHOP

The Indonesia Ministry of Research Technology in collaboration with AIFIS offers the Academic Writing for International Publication workshop to enhance the capacity of Indonesian scholars in the field of social sciences, arts and humanities, and applied sciences to publish their research in international academic journals or academic presses.

In adapting to the current challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop series is offered virtually, including through synchronous and asynchronous sessions.

The Academic Writing workshop focuses on the challenges faced by Indonesian scholars working in especially social science fields, arts and humanities, and applied sciences in publishing internationally, and on strategies and methods to overcome these challenges. The workshop targets Indonesian scholars and researchers who have a manuscript in preparation for publication in international outlets. Groups of Indonesian researchers are invited to work with qualified mentors identified by AIFIS, who will assist workshop participants with the skills, knowledge, and procedures necessary to submit manuscripts to reputable international publishers, as well as provide participants with intensive feedback on their manuscripts. Qualified mentors will include experienced scholars and researchers who have a track record of successful publication in high quality international academic journals.

Workshop Date:        May 31 – June 16, 2021 (10-12 working days/2-2.5 weeks)

Format:                      

1)     Virtual Workshop: Synchronous virtual presentation & discussion sessions through Zoom (18:00 – 21:30 WIB)

2)     Small-group mentor-author virtual meetings (1 - 1.5 hour in long via Zoom at a time decided together by mentor and author; 2 times per week)

3)     Intensive cycles of consultation/feedback and rewrite/revision

4)     Daily Assignments

5)      Paper Presentation at the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies

Application submission deadline is Wednesday, March 31, 2021 23:59 WIB (Jakarta time)

Please submit application to: aaworkshops_apply@aifis.org

Important Dates

Application Open                                   Feb 1, 2021

Application Submission Deadline           March 31, 2021

Notification of Selected Applicants         May 3, 2021

Workshop Dates                                     May 31–June 16, 2021

Presentation at the International

Conference on Indonesian Studies        June 23-26, 2021

Click the below button to download the submission guideline and the application form!

application form
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Evil Fails Virtue Prevails: Indonesian Shadow Theater Performance in Honor of US Inauguration

Evil Fails Virtue Prevails: Indonesian Shadow Theater Performance in Honor of US Inauguration

Date: January 30, 2021 | 8:00 AM - 01:00 PM EST / 20:00 - 01:00 WIB in Jakarta (Java), Indonesia

In honor of the inauguration of President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Indonesia’s celebrated shadow theater artist (dalang) Ki Purbo Asmoro will be giving a special live streaming performance from Indonesia.

This event will be covered by Voice of America, and is sponsored by the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) on the simultaneous English translations of the wayang, the Indonesian Cultural and Educational Foundation (AICEF), UNIMA Indonesia and Sanggar Ekalaya, the performance will be a traditional story from the wayang literature but will include specially designed puppets representing President Biden and Vice President Harris that will converse and interact with other characters during the middle of the performance when it is customary for the puppeteer to create comedic scenes that provide social commentary on contemporary events and trends.

Watch below:

Wayang Virtual Performance: Baladewa's Willful Release from the World 9With English Translation by Kathryn 'Kitsie' Emerson

15 Jan 2021

Ki Purbo Asmoro will be performing Baladewa Muksa (Baladewa's Willful Release from the World") in commemoration of the 100th day after the passing of his father, Mbah Damiri Soemarno.

The entire musical troupe will be from his immediate family!

Friday, 15 January 2021

2-6am Honolulu

5-9am San Francisco and Los Angeles

6-10 am Missoula

7-11am Chicago

8am to noon on the East Coast, USA

13:00-17:00 in London

14:00-18:00 in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels

20:00-midnight in Java and Hanoi

21:00-01:00 in Singapore and Bali

22:00-02:00 in Tokyo

starts at midnight and goes in 16 Jan 4am, in Sydney and Melbourne

English translation sponsored by American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS).

The American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS)

Watch below:

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ONLINE WORKSHOP: AUDACITY AND ELAN FOR LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION

Background

Indonesia is home to more than 700 languages, and many of them are undocumented. While these languages are invaluable to the country, most of them are endangered as people are shifting to using regional lingua francas or Indonesian, the country’s national language.

Although efforts to document these languages have started, the endangerment pace is so rapid that we need to work harder. One of the problems in documenting local languages is that many local linguists have not implemented modern methods in doing language documentation, such as using softwares to transcribe and annotate data.

To build the capacity of local linguists in doing language documentation in using tools for language documentation, PKBB and AIFIS are conducting a workshop. In this workshop, we  will specifically focus on Audacity and ELAN. Audacity is an easy-to-use, multy-track audio editor and recorder for windows, mac OSX, GNU/Linux and other oepanting systems (can be downloaded from https://www.audacityteam.org/download/). ELAN is an annotation tool that allows people to  create, edit, visualize, and search annotations for videos and audio data (can be downloaded from https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan/download).

Watch below:

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