This thesis will examine the more active role played in Java by the urban wong cilik (the underclass; literally, the 'little people') in contesting the state�s authority, particularly during the later years of the New Order regime, and following its demise in 1998. I will provide examples of social practices employed by the wong cilik in their everyday lives and in their adaptation to periods of significant social and political upheaval. These demonstrate the ways in which they are able to contest the state�s efforts to impose its authority. These practices also develop and employ a variety of subversive discourses, whose categories and values diverge significantly from the official language of government. The examination of the relative linguistic, cultural and normative autonomy of the seemingly powerless underclass reveals an extremely contested political terrain in which the wong cilik are active rather than passive agents in urban society. These ideas have developed out of urban field research sited around warungs (sidewalk food stalls), urban kampongs and in the city streets of the three Javanese cities of Yogyakarta, Surabaya, and Jakarta. These urban social spaces will be shown to be significant for the underclass because they constitute sites through which they constantly interact with diverse social groups, thereby sharpening their knowledge of the contradictions and feelings of otherness manifest between the classes in Java�s large cities. It will be shown how, in these spaces, the underclass also experience the state�s attempts at control through various officially sanctioned projects and how the underclass are able to subvert those projects through expressive means such as songs, poems and forms of mockery which combine to make the state�s dominant discourses lose much of their efficacy.

We can best understand the moral obligations of citizens and officials concerning public reason as set out by John Rawls when two differing standards latent in his body of work are made explicit. The weaker standard, which I call Public Representation (or PR), is exegetically supported primarily by the proviso found in his “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. PR allows that citizens may deliberate over serious political matters, both internally and with others, according to whatever perspective and using whatever reasons they please, so long as they believe the positions they advocate are adequately just and adequately justifiable with public reasons. I present PR as establishing a moral minimum citizens and officials bear an obligation to satisfy on pain of failing to garner an adequate degree of justice, respect, legitimacy, and stability. The more demanding standard, which I call Public Judgment (or PJ), is exegetically supported by quotes found throughout Rawls’s work, but especially in Political Liberalism, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. PJ requires that citizens deliberate over serious political matters, both internally and with others, according to a public perspective with public reasons, that they only advocate positions and offer justifications they consider most reasonable, and that they share their thought processes in public. PR is nonobligatory, but achieves significant gains according to each of the four key political values mentioned above, which gives dedicated citizens good reason to embrace it. Chapter one lays out and explores the big picture concepts framing the project; chapter two sets out Rawls’s view on public reason according to the primary texts; chapter three presents four contemporary liberal theorists’ views on public reason – Nicholas Wolterstorff, Robert Audi, David Reidy, and Micah Schwartzman; chapter four uses the lessons of chapter three to help fully unpack and compare Public Representation and Public Judgment; and chapter five considers three potential objections to my view and offers corresponding replies.

<p>In this dissertation, I develop a political liberal ethics of citizenship that reconciles conflicting religious and civic obligations concerning political participation and deliberation--a liberal-democratic ethics of citizenship that is compatible with religious integrity. I begin by canvassing the current state of the debate between political liberals and their religious critics, engaging Rawls's Political Liberalism and the various religious objections Nicholas Wolterstorff, Christopher Eberle, Robert George, John Finnis, Paul Weithman, Jeffrey Stout, and Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier develop (Chapter One). I then critically evaluate political liberalism's requirements of citizens in light of the religious objections and the religious objections in light of political liberal norms of reciprocity, concluding that some religious citizens have legitimate complaints against citizenship requirements that forbid citizens from offering religious arguments alone in public political discussions (Chapter Two). Next, I propose an alternative set of guidelines for public political discussions in constitutional democracies, the phased account of democratic decision-making, that, I argue, addresses the religious citizens' legitimate complaints without undermining a constitutional democracy's legitimacy or commitment to public justification (Chapter Three). Then, I argue that a religious practice of political engagement I call prophetic witnessing is compatible with the phased account, can serve as a canonical model to guide religious citizens' political participation, and can help religious citizens navigate the substantive conflicts between their religious and civic obligations that remain possible even in a society that follows the phased account (Chapter Four). Finally, I conclude by imagining three different democracies, each adhering to a different set of guidelines for public political discussions, in order to argue for the benefit of adopting norms that balance citizens' obligations to govern themselves legitimately with citizens' ability to integrate their deepest moral and religious commitments and their public, political argument and advocacy.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Habil.)--Tübingen, Universiẗat, 2008/2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [567]-638) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, March 2004. / Title from PDF title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Political Science)--Vanderbilt University, 2003. / Title from PDF title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This thesis examines the complex interplay between colonial modernity and Sakta (goddess-centered) devotion in the context of an elite family of zamindars (landholders) in Bengal. One consequence of colonialism in Bengal was the efflorescence of overt Sakta religiosity among Bengal's elite. Religious practice, supposedly "protected" by the colonial order, became the site where indigenous elites expressed political will and, to an extent, resisted foreign domination. I argue that the zamindars of Bansberia in the Hugli district of Bengal were creative agents, engaging and resisting the various cultural ruptures represented by colonial rule in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Employing analyses of archival material, contemporary ethnography, and architectural style, this thesis is an ethnohistory of a modern zamindari-kingdom that locates its political voice in an emblematic Sakta-Tantric temple. It demonstrates the powerful relationship between religion and politics in colonial Bengal and discusses the implications of this strong association in the contemporary context.

As Indonesian Muslim depictions of Christianity have varied over time, this study is an attempt to provide a brief survey of the Muslim attitudes towards Christianity in modern Indonesia. It will set the stage by first investigating the Muslim depiction of Christianity as found in the seventeenth century works of Nuruddin al-Raniri. It will go on to survey some aspects of Dutch colonial policy concerning Indonesian Islam and will cover Muslim responses to and perceptions of Christian doctrine in the Old Order and New Order periods. Some polemical writings from the two communities produced by such writers as Hendrik Kraemer, F. L. Bakker, A. Hassan, A. Haanie and Hasbullah Bakry will be examined in detail. / This thesis will inquire into the connection between Indonesian Muslims' treatment of Christians, ranging from polemic and suspicion to dialogue and accommodation, and political events which occurred and religio-political policies adopted particularly in the New Order under Soeharto. Furthermore, this thesis will also discuss the works of Mukti Ali and Nurcholish Madjid who in recent years have called for the more objective and positive dialogue leading to practical cooperation between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia.

This thesis is an historical examination of the most radical antireligious policy in Eastern Europe under Communism. It will document the Albanian government's religious policy during the Communist period between 1944--1991, devoting special attention to the policy initiated during the Albanian Cultural Revolution (1967) which outlawed all religious practice of Islam and Christianity, public and private, for a period of twenty-three years. Historical factors which had bearing on the Albanian regime's militant atheism will be surveyed. The ideology of the Albanian Communist Party, the main component of which is nationalism, will be cited as the foundation of the "World's First Atheist State." This research will further address the he vulnerabilities of Albanian religious institutions, making possible their vulnerabilities of Albanian religious institutions, making possible their abolition by the state, as well as the significant amount of popular resistance to the state's official atheism, ensuring the return of Islam and Christianity to Albanian society.