Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond

Michel Picard is a retired senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a founding member of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies (“Centre Asie du Sud-Est”, CNRS-EHESS) in Paris. An anthropologist by training, he has published extensively in the field of Balinese studies, specifically on tourism, culture, identity, ethnicity and religion.

“The Volume provides a range of ethnographic case studies that – together with Michel Picard’s insightful introduction – contribute new perspectives to the study of religion in the Southeast Asia-Pacific region, and, more generally, to the anthropology of religion. … The volume is thus a strong reminder, not just for anthropologists of Southeast Asia but also for scholars and students of other disciplines and regions, that it is necessary to deconstruct and historicize the categories in which we have come to think.” (Kirsten W. Endres, SOJOURN - Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 34 (1), March 2019)

• 1: Introduction: Local Traditions and World Religions. Encountering ‘Religion’ in Southeast Asia and Melanesia.- 2: About Buddhist Burma. Thathana, or ‘Religion’ as Social Space.- 3: The (Re)configuration of the Buddhist Field in Post-Communist Cambodia.- 4: Re-connecting the Ancestors: Buddhism and Animism on the Boloven Plateau, Laos.- 5: Balinese Religion in the Making: An enquiry About the Interpretation of Agama Hindu as ‘Hinduism’.- 6. Return to the Source: A Balinese Pilgrimage to India and the Re-enchantment of Agama Hindu in global modernity.-  7.- A Wall, Even in Those Days! Encounters with Religions and What Became of the Tradition.-  8:Encounters with Christianity in the North Moluccas (16th-19th Centuries).- 9: Continuity and Breaches in Religion and Globalization, a Melanesian Point of View.