Transforming rituals: Creating cultural harmony among the Dou Mbawa of eastern Indonesia

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Transforming rituals: Creating cultural harmony among the Dou Mbawa of eastern Indonesia
 
Creator Wahid, Abdul
 
Subject Theology; Cultural Studies plurality; tension; transformation; harmony; ethnic identity
Description This study revolves around the configurations of Dou Mbawa [People of Mbawa] in Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, eastern Indonesia, mapped onto the three main sociocultural-religious groups of Muslims, Christians and Parafu [followers of local beliefs]. It focuses on the Raju ritual as a ‘text’, representing social structures and dynamics of religious tension among the Dou Mbawa, which has been understudied in the existing works of literature. The central position of the Raju ritual is highlighted, as it is born from the cosmological worldview and simultaneously practised by all three religious groups annually. Such interwoven ambiguities occurred in the life of the Dou Mbawa, involving ideology, authority and agents or actors (religious elites), generating tension and confrontation that have led to Raju’s transformation from religious expression to cultural adaptation. Using ethnographic data generated from 2019 to 2020, this study argues that a Raju ritual is a political act that merely reflects the ideology of its supporters and shapes their capital bases and communicative actions to respond to social segregations.Contribution: This article shows how the Raju ritual promotes cohesiveness and harmony for a religiously diverse community by creating a shared ethnic identity and exercising it as a cultural adaptation.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Universitas Islam Negeri Mataram
Date 2022-07-28
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v78i1.7748
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 78, No 1 (2022); 7 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7748/22791 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7748/22792 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7748/22793 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7748/22794
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Abdul Wahid https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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