Ritual and Social Change: Another Javanese Example

This paper was submitted for publication to American Anthropologist and in the usual manner was sent anonymously to three referees. The referees' coymerits are appended     

Family Expressed Emotion in a Javanese Cultural Context

This study aims at understanding the emotional milieu of families of psychotic patients, focusing on the concept of expressed emotion (EE). A combination of ethnographic and clinical methodology was employed. During the fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, nine participants diagnosed as having first episode psychosis and their families were followed closely over the course of 1 year in their natural home setting. Through ongoing engagement with families, the researcher was able to gather data on the diversity of family responses to illness. Despite the fact that most families in this research could be considered to have low EE, ethnographic observation provided a more complex and nuanced picture of family relationships. This article discusses four issues concerning EE in relation to Javanese culture: the role of interpretation, the coexistence of criticism and warmth, the interpretation of boundary transgression, and the cultural concept of warmth and positive remark.     

From Cosmogony to Exorcism in a Javanese Genesis.

From Cosmogony to Exorcism in. Javanese Genesis. Stephen C. Headley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 250 pp.     

Healing the Modern in a Central Javanese City.

Healing the Modern in. Central Javanese City. Steve Ferzacca. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001. 280 pp.     

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and Terrorism

The link between Islam and terrorism became a central media concern following September 11, resulting in new rounds of "culture talk. This talk has turned religious experience into a political category, differentiating 'good Muslims" from "bad Muslims, rather than terrorists from civilians. The implication is undisguised: Whether in Afghanistan, Palestine, or Pakistan, Islam must be quarantined and the devil must be exorcized from it by a civil war between good Muslims and bad Muslims. This article suggests that we lift the quarantine and turn the cultural theory of politics on its head. Beyond the simple but radical suggestion that if there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, there must also be good Westerners and bad Westerners, I question the very tendency to read Islamist politics as an effect of Islamic civilization—whether good or bad—and Western power as an effect of Western civilization. Both those politics and that power are born of an encounter, and neither can be understood outside of the history of that encounter. Cultural explanations of political outcomes tend to avoid history and issues. Thinking of individuals from "traditional" cultures in authentic and original terms, culture talk dehistoricizes the construction of political identities. This article places the terror of September 11 in a historical and political context. Rather than a residue of a premodern culture in modern politics, terrorism is best understood as a modern construction. Even when it harnesses one or another aspect of tradition and culture, the result is a modern ensemble at the service of a modern project. [Keywords: Muslims, culture talk, Islamist politics, political identities, terrorism]     

Control,Change, and Suffering: The Messages of Shan Buddhist Sermons

Shan villagers are Buddhists, but their main access to Buddhist ideology is through the sermons the local monks preach. We describe the content of a number of sermons. These outline a system where lack of control causes change which causes suffering. The sermons teach about the acquisition of knowledge where the objective is not to control but to escape from the system. Power, gained through withdrawal or relationships with powerful beings, gives more control, consequently less change, and less suffering. One can convert impermanent material wealth into changeless merit by offering it to the monks or temple. Offerings to non-reciprocating monks are competitive and define a hierarchy of both power and prestige. The ideology so outlined is one aspect of the Shan world view based on morally neutral power and is related to Shan political and economic forms. The monks serve state power not only by defining this ideology and receiving offerings but also by preaching about the benefits of making offerings and the importance of people behaving properly in their positions in the hierarchy.     

Gender in the Muslim Middle East

Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Margot Badran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 352 pp.
Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State. Sondra Hale. Boulder, CO. Westview Press, 1996. 294 pp.
Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions. Marcia C. Inhorn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. 441 pp.     

The Invisible Economy: Javanese Commerce in the Late Colonial State

Javanese economic history is conventionally represented as an involutionary process in which rural Javanese, protected from the deleterious effects of capitalism by the colonial State, intensified subsistence agriculture to provide each household with a meagre living. This study challenges the conventional interpretation in two respects. Firstly it demonstrates that before the Dutch established economic control and again around 1900, trade and petty commodity production were significant sectors of the indigenous economy producing perhaps thirty percent of rural income. Secondly, it argues that the inability of Javanese traders to compete with Chinese wholesalers was not due to a lack of commercial acumen but to State policies which inhibited capital accumulation and made credit prohibitively expensive.     

Children in the Muslim Middle East

Children in the Muslim Middle East. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.477 pp.     

Global Violence and Indonesian Muslim Politics

The attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States and the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan provoked fierce threats of violence in Indonesia, the world's largest majority-Muslim country. Western journalists portrayed these reactions as among the most destabilizing in the Muslim world. Less widely reported, however, was the intensification of a struggle between Muslim proponents of democracy and neof undamentalist conservatives, sparked by the same incidents. This article explores the varied reactions of Muslims to the violence of September 11 and its aftermath in light of this contest between rival Muslim groupings. It examines their competing visions of Islam and nation, as well as their supporting alliances in state and society. The example highlights the pluralism of Muslim politics and the special challenges of democratic transitions. Emphasizing the plurality and permeability of civilizations, the example also suggests that there is no "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West but, rather, a more open process of globalization, localization, and exchange. [Keywords: Islam, Indonesia, violence, democratization, civilization]     

Looking for Identity in the Muslim World

Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. Lila Abu-Lughod. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 2005. 319 pp.
Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Eric Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 385 pp.
Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies. Armando Salvatore and Mark LeVine, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 249 pp.
Contesting Rituals: Islam and Practices of Identity Making. Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern, eds. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005. 239 pp.     

Heavy Metal-Induced Differential Gene Expression of Metallothionein in Javanese Medaka, Oryzias javanicus

A metallothionein (MT) gene was isolated for the first time from Javanese medaka, Oryzias javanicus, which shows high adaptability from freshwater to seawater. The full-length cDNA of MT from O. javanicus (OjaMT) comprises 349 bp, excluding the poly(A)⁺ stretch, and codes for a total of 60 amino acids. The positions of cysteine residues are highly conserved. The pattern of OjaMT expression induced by six heavy metals was analyzed via real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The level of hepatic OjaMT mRNA was increased in a dose-dependent manner by Ag, Cd, Cu, and Zn after 24 h of exposure. However, after Cr and Ni exposure, a significant decrease in OjaMT levels was observed. Cadmium-induced OjaMT expression was detectable in fishes as young as 3 months. After Cd exposure, OjaMT induction was prominent in intestine and liver and moderate in muscle and gill. OjaMT mRNA levels could represent a good biomarker for monitoring heavy metals in seawater.     

Bioethics in artificial reproduction in the Muslim world

In Islam infertility and its remedy with the unforbidden is allowed and encouraged. It is essential if it involves preservation of procreation and treatment of infertility in one partner of the married couples. This is applicable to artificial reproduction which is one line of treatment of infertility.... The prevention and treatment of infertility are of particular significance in the Muslim World. The social status of the Muslim woman, her dignity and self-esteem are closely related to her procreation potential in the family and in the society as a whole. Childbirth and rearing are regarded as family commitments and not just biological and social functions.     

问题式教学与方法式教学在微生物学教学中的应用

微生物学是工科院校生物技术专业的专业基础课,又是一门在工业上应用非常广泛的学科。针对工科院校学生需要较强的动手能力,根据微生物学的内容特点,对理论教学的改革进行了探讨,提出了问题式和综合式教学方法,取得了较好的教学效果。