James L. Peacock – författare

Muslim Puritans: Reformist Psychology in Southeast Asian Islam provides a compelling exploration of how Islamic reform movements in Southeast Asia intertwine cultural transformation with psychological rationalization. Through a Weberian lens, the book delves into the regions of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, analyzing the ways in which the rationalization of religious beliefs leads to shifts in behavior, identity, and social structures. By employing a combination of statistical, ethnographic, and historical methods, the study bridges the gap between individual psychology and broader cultural reform, offering nuanced insights into the ripple effects of modernization and religious purification.The author contextualizes reformist Islam in Southeast Asia against the backdrop of Weber’s theories on rationalization and the Protestant Ethic, focusing on the psychological dynamics of these changes. By examining movements like the Kaum Muda and organizations such as Muhammadijah, the book reveals how reformist ideals—centered on purification and individual interpretation (idjtihad)—reshape personal and communal practices, from family life to educational structures. With its detailed case studies, this work not only expands Weberian analysis to the Islamic world but also sheds light on the enduring impact of reformist ideologies in diverse sociopolitical contexts, making it an essential resource for scholars of religion, psychology, and Southeast Asian studies.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Muslim Puritans: Reformist Psychology in Southeast Asian Islam provides a compelling exploration of how Islamic reform movements in Southeast Asia intertwine cultural transformation with psychological rationalization. Through a Weberian lens, the book delves into the regions of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, analyzing the ways in which the rationalization of religious beliefs leads to shifts in behavior, identity, and social structures. By employing a combination of statistical, ethnographic, and historical methods, the study bridges the gap between individual psychology and broader cultural reform, offering nuanced insights into the ripple effects of modernization and religious purification.The author contextualizes reformist Islam in Southeast Asia against the backdrop of Weber’s theories on rationalization and the Protestant Ethic, focusing on the psychological dynamics of these changes. By examining movements like the Kaum Muda and organizations such as Muhammadijah, the book reveals how reformist ideals—centered on purification and individual interpretation (idjtihad)—reshape personal and communal practices, from family life to educational structures. With its detailed case studies, this work not only expands Weberian analysis to the Islamic world but also sheds light on the enduring impact of reformist ideologies in diverse sociopolitical contexts, making it an essential resource for scholars of religion, psychology, and Southeast Asian studies.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Anthropology is a complex, wide-ranging, and ever-changing field. This clear, coherent, and well-crafted book is a revised version of a very successful text first published in 1986, designed to supplement standard textbooks and monographs. It covers the central concepts, distinctive methodologies, and philosophical as well as practical issues of cultural anthropology, and it is accessible to the anthropological novice, and of value to the professional. The updated version covers current issues in cultural anthropology, and includes topics such as globalization, gender, post-modernism and public issues, and reflects changes in perspective and language.

Anthropology is a complex, wide-ranging, and ever-changing field. This clear, coherent, and well-crafted book is a revised version of a very successful text first published in 1986, designed to supplement standard textbooks and monographs. It covers the central concepts, distinctive methodologies, and philosophical as well as practical issues of cultural anthropology, and it is accessible to the anthropological novice, and of value to the professional. The updated version covers current issues in cultural anthropology, and includes topics such as globalization, gender, post-modernism and public issues, and reflects changes in perspective and language.

The world is flat? Maybe not, says this paradigm-shifting study of globalism's impact on a region legendarily resistant to change. The U.S. South, long defined in terms of its differences with the U.S. North, is moving out of this national and oppositional frame of reference into one that is more international and integrative. Likewise, as the South (home to UPS, CNN, KFC, and other international brands) goes global, people are emigrating there from countries like India, Mexico, and Vietnam—and becoming southerners. Much has been made of the demographic and economic aspects of this shift. Until now, though, no one has systematically shown what globalism means to the southern sense of self.Anthropologist James L. Peacock looks at the South of both the present and the past to develop the idea of "grounded globalism," in which global forces and local cultures rooted in history, tradition, and place reverberate against each other in mutually sustaining and energizing ways. Peacock's focus is on a particular part of the world; however, his model is widely relevant: "Some kind of grounding in locale is necessary to human beings."Grounded Globalism draws on perspectives from fields as diverse as ecology, anthropology, religion, and history to move us beyond the model, advanced by such scholars as C. Vann Woodward, that depicts the South as a region paralyzed by the burden of its past. Peacock notes that, while globalism may lift old burdens, it may at the same time impose new ones. He also maintains that earlier regional identities have not been replaced by the rootless cosmopolitanism of cyberspace or other abstracted systems. Attachments to place remain, even as worldwide markets erase boundaries and flatten out differences and distinctions among nations. Those attachments exert their own pressures back on globalism, says Peacock, with subtle strengths we should not discount.

The Muhammadijah (or Muhammadiyah) movement was founded by Ahmad Dahlan in 1912 and evolved to emphasize religious and secular education, personal moral responsibility, and a tolerance for other faiths. It is the second largest Islamic organization in Indonesia with an estimated 30 million followers. In 1970, James L. Peacock spent eight months in Indonesia immersing himself in the thinking, religious practice, and daily lives of Muhammadijah followers. Published in 1978, this historical and ethnographic study was one the first books about this major Islamic reform movement and is considered an insightful and relevant work to this day.

The Mountain District Primitive Baptist Association enfolds churches in four counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains-North Carolina's Ashe and Allegheny counties and Virginia's Grayson and Carroll counties. Primitive Baptists are found throughout the United States and are related to the Strict and Particular Baptists of the United Kingdom. They are Calvinists, adhering to the theologies of John Calvin, John Bunyan, and British theologians such as Henry Philpott. As Calvinists, they teach predestination-that before the creation of the Earth, God chose who would be saved and damned. No one knows who is which and no one can change this destiny. Originally published in 1989, Pilgrims of Paradox is based on extensive fieldwork conducted in the 1980s. Despite what may seem a fatalistic doctrine, Peacock and Tyson show that the Primitive Baptists of this region live vigorous, sturdy lives marked by self-sufficiency and caring for their community. They also inspire others in the area with the beauty of their hymns and ""discourses"" and by accomplishments bounded by humility.

Symbols and symbolism are, and always have been, an integral part of myth, belief, ideology, ritual, art, and fantasy. These basic areas of human activity are traditionally investigated under a very wide range of headings; but this book ignores the boundaries of such diverse disciplines as political science, religious sociology, psychology, and literature. Originally published in 1975, Consciousness and Change draws upon all these sources, and more; the result is both an introduction to and a perspective on the developing (though at the time by no means clearly defined) field of symbolic anthropology. The book opens with an analysis of symbols, discussing some of their essential qualities. The author then proceeds to examine the Durkheimian and Weberian schools of thought, as reflected in the works of anthropologists ranging from Levi-Strauss to Clifford Geertz; next, he considers the development of Protean symbolism, using material material derived from his own field experience in the U.S. South and elsewhere. He concludes with a typology relating different types of symbols to different periods of history, from the primitivism of the Australian aborigine to the quasi-primitivism of the modern commune-dweller. While it is not intended as a comprehensive textbook, Consciousness and Change provides student and lay reader alike with an introductory overview of the anthropology of symbols.

Fulbright's 2002-2003 New Century Scholars program brought together social scientists from around the world whose work "addresses[ed] sectarian, ethnic and cultural conflict within and across national borders." Several of us agreed that group identity lies at the root of ethnic and sectarian violence. We spent a year in intense discussion of parallel research projects. This book is the result. It describes the processes, which lead to ethnic and sectarian violence, and reveals how alternative paths through intergroup tension can be made apparent by understanding the patterns of behavior used by groups worldwide to maintain their identities and by appreciating the unique identity of each group involved in a conflict, that is, what it holds sacred and what seems inalienable from it.