Islamic Spectrum in Java By Timothy Daniels, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009. hbk. 210 pages

Abstract

Timothy Daniels’ Islamic Spectrum in Java critically examines the myriad
of ways in which Javanese Muslims draw on religious and secular ideas to
project desirable futures for their local societies, for the Indonesian nation,
and for Indonesia’s place in the global economic, political, and cultural
structures of the twenty-first century. This book identifies a broad range
of desirable futures projected by Javanese Muslims, as well as a range of
beliefs and practices that comprise Javanese Islam (12). While this engaging
work is very likely to appeal to scholars in many fields, theoretically
and methodologically it is foremost an anthropological study. Synthesizing
symbolic and cognitive anthropology in order to “provide ‘thick description’
1 symbols . . . and to ascertain the social distribution of knowledge
and formation of mental representations in various contexts (4).” Daniels
draws primarily on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Yogyakarta
area of south-central Java from 2003 to 2004 ...