"Religious Festivals in Contemporary Southeast Asia,"
February 16-18, 2007

(Poster* | Program*) *PDF format

Conference Organizers:
Patrick Alcedo
Hendrik M.J. Maier
Sally Ann Ness

This conference will explore festivals as embodied narratives in which the connections between religion and nationalism, globality and locality,tourism and politics are drawn, urgent issues that invite careful unfoldings in Southeast Asian Studies today.

Our ideas for this conference are steered by two complementary assumptions. Firstly, religious festivals are pivotal events in the life of a local community, no matter how heterogeneous itself. Secondly, in spite of its differences, Southeast Asia is tied together by certain commonalities, and a discussion of religious festivals could make a substantial contribution to determining these commonalities.

In order to make the conference lively and focused-to be commemorated by the publication of a volume of interconnected essays-participants will address some of the following issues and questions:

Religious festivals are concentrated moments of communality and expressions of a community's faith. However, they are also a means of empowering political and economic networks. What is the nature of the intersection of the sacred and the secular in religious festivals celebrated in Southeast Asia today?

Increasingly inherent to religious festivals are the concerns of the tourist industry: religious festivals are actively employed for tourist consumption. In this process of touristification, issues of authenticity, locality, and heritage have become more prominent, but also more problematic.

Religious festivals often foreground narratives of various sorts, which are stories of origins and beginnings. Performative activities such as dancing, singing, chanting, procession, and theatrical presentations, i.e the central elements in every festival, are embodiments of these narratives, evoking those very beginnings in a continuous cycle. How do these embodiments occur?

Religious festivals are extraordinary occasions in which, among many other things, gender is played out and displayed in public. How are festivals gendered in contemporary
Southeast Asia?

Festivals are by nature repetitive, and repetitions are by definition a process of similarities and differentiations. A discussion of any festival necessarily implies articulation and a distinct interest in shifts and changes over time.

For more information, contact Patrick Alcedo at patrick.alcedo@ucr.edu.

PATRICK ALCEDO, Ph.D.
SEATRiP, Program for Southeast
Asian Studies
Department of Comparative Literature
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521