Religion and Social Transformation in Southeast Asia

This panel brings together four papers exploring religion and social transformation across Southeast Asian contexts. The first paper “Blue Lives Matter: Ocean, New Materialism, and Ecotheology analyzes how “blue” ecotheologies complement “green” environmental movements globally – and particularly in Southeast Asia – by re-centering the ocean as a sacred site that gives and sustains life. The second paper, “Contesting Religious Violence and the Indigenization of Islam in Indonesia,” examines how leaders of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul “Ulama” address the challenge of extremist ideology by appealing to Islam’s virtues of tolerance and grassroots peacemaking initiatives. The third paper “The Dharma Transmission Trope in Medieval Vietnam: Syncretism and Cultic Appropriation in the Invention of a Buddhist Rainmaking Cult,” complicates narratives of how Vietnamese Buddhism has developed historically through a close examination of medieval textual resources. Finally, “Chinatown as a Hybridized Socio-Religious Space for Chinese Christian Diaspora in Southeast Asia: An Indonesian Case,” analyzes how Christianity affects Chinese diaspora experiences in Southeast Asia.