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Christian Moderns

Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter

Webb Keane author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of California Press

Published:8th Dec '06

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Christian Moderns cover

Across much of the postcolonial world, Christianity has often become inseparable from ideas and practices linking the concept of modernity to that of human emancipation. To explore these links, Webb Keane undertakes a rich ethnographic study of the century-long encounter, from the colonial Dutch East Indies to post-independence Indonesia, among Calvinist missionaries, their converts, and those who resist conversion. Keane's analysis of their struggles over such things as prayers, offerings, and the value of money challenges familiar notions about agency. Through its exploration of language, materiality, and morality, this book illuminates a wide range of debates in social and cultural theory. It demonstrates the crucial place of Christianity in semiotic ideologies of modernity and sheds new light on the importance of religion in colonial and postcolonial histories.

"Webb Keane's book demonstrates, once again, that nothing illuminates the puzzles of modernity as effectively as cross-cultural studies of colonial encounters. His careful, inter-disciplinary, and penetrating analysis of the semiotics of conversion to Dutch Calvinism in the Indonesian island of Sumba and his skillful blending of theological and anthropological issues will make this book a model for studies of religious conversion. It truly deserves a wide readership." - Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference"

ISBN: 9780520246522

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 20mm

Weight: 454g

336 pages