Robert W. Hefner

Bio: Robert W. Hefner is an academic researcher from Boston University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Islam & Politics. The author has an hindex of 31, co-authored 142 publications receiving 3978 citations. Previous affiliations of Robert W. Hefner include Institute for Advanced Study & Kenyon College.

Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia

Abstract: Foreward vii Preface xi Acknowlegments xxi List of Abbreviations xxiii Chapter One: Democratization in an Age of Religious Revitalization 3 Chapter Two: Civil Precedence 21 Chapter Three: Contests of Nation 37 Chapter Four: Ambivalent Alliances: Religion and Politics in the Early New Order 58 Chapter Five: The Modernist Travail 94 Chapter Six: Islam Deferred: Regimist Islam and the Struggle for the Middle Class 128 Chapter Seven: Uncivil State: Muslims and Violence in Soeharto's Fall 167 Chapter Eight: Conclusion: Muslim Politics, Global Modernity 214 Notes 223 Index 271

Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia

Abstract: Foreward vii Preface xi Acknowlegments xxi List of Abbreviations xxiii Chapter One: Democratization in an Age of Religious Revitalization 3 Chapter Two: Civil Precedence 21 Chapter Three: Contests of Nation 37 Chapter Four: Ambivalent Alliances: Religion and Politics in the Early New Order 58 Chapter Five: The Modernist Travail 94 Chapter Six: Islam Deferred: Regimist Islam and the Struggle for the Middle Class 128 Chapter Seven: Uncivil State: Muslims and Violence in Soeharto's Fall 167 Chapter Eight: Conclusion: Muslim Politics, Global Modernity 214 Notes 223 Index 271

Conversion to Christianity : historical and anthropological perspectives on a great transformation

Abstract: Robert W. Hefner, Introduction Howard Clark Kee on the Early Church Terence Ranger on Southern Africa Robert W. Hefner on Java William L. Merrill on Mexico Donald K. Pollock on Amazonia John Barker on Papua, New Guinea Aram A. Yengoyan on Australia Charles F. Keyes on Thailand David K. Jordan on China Peter Wood, Afterword

MULTIPLE MODERNITIES: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism in a Globalizing Age

Abstract: ▪ Abstract The late twentieth century has seen far-reaching changes in the translocal cultural regimes known as world religions. This review examines the politics and meanings of recent changes in three such religions: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. It highlights the nature of the forces reshaping religious meanings and authority, the processes promoting conversion and standardization, and the implications of these religious refigurations for our understanding of late modernity itself. Though modernity is multiple and every tradition unique, this review suggests that all contemporary religions confront a similar structural predicament, related to the globalization of mass societies and the porous pluralism of late modernity.

Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education

Abstract: Acknowledgments vii A Note on Transliteration and Spelling ix Contributors xi CHAPTER 1: Introduction: The Culture, Politics, and Future of Muslim Education by Robert W. Hefner 1 CHAPTER 2: Madrasas Medieval and Modern: Politics, Education, and the Problem of Muslim Identity by Jonathan P. Berkey 40 CHAPTER 3: Tradition and Authority in Deobandi Madrasas of South Asia by Muhammad Qasim Zaman 61 CHAPTER 4: Madrasas and Minorities in Secular India by Barbara Metcalf 87 CHAPTER 5: The "Recentering" of Religious Knowledge and Discourse: The Case of al-Azhar in Twentieth-Century Egypt by Malika Zeghal 107 CHAPTER 6: Madrasas in Morocco: Their Vanishing Public Role by Dale F. Eickelman 131 CHAPTER 7: Islam and Education in Secular Turkey: State Policies and the Emergence of the Fethullah Gulen Group by Bekim Agai 149 CHAPTER 8: Pesantren and Madrasa: Muslim Schools and National Ideals in Indonesia by Azyumardi Azra, Dina Afrianty, and Robert W. Hefner 172 CHAPTER 9: The Transformation of Muslim Schooling in Mali: The Madrasa as an Institution of Social and Religious Mediation by Louis Brenner 199 CHAPTER 10: Islamic Education in Britain: Approaches to Religious Knowledge in a Pluralistic Society by Peter Mandaville 224 CHAPTER 11: Epilogue: Competing Conceptions of Religious Education by Muhammad Qasim Zaman 242 Index 269

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

Abstract: Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

Abstract: Part I. Understanding Secularization: 1. The secularization debate 2. Measuring secularization 3. Comparing secularization worldwide Part II. Case Studies of Religion and Politics: 4. The puzzle of secularization in the United States and Western Europe 5. A religious revival in post-communist Europe? 6. Religion and politics in the Muslim world Part III. The Consequences of Secularization: 7. Religion, the Protestant ethic, and moral values 8. Religious organizations and social capital 9. Religious parties and electoral behavior Part IV. Conclusions: 10. Secularization and its consequences 11. Re-examining the theory of existential security 12. Re-examining evidence for the security thesis.

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Abstract: WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Chains and networks, territories and scales: towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy

Abstract: A vast and continually expanding literature on economic globalization continues to generate a miasma of conflicting viewpoints and alternative discourses. This article argues that any understanding of the global economy must be sensitive to four considerations: (a) conceptual categories and labels carry with them the dis- cursive power to shape material processes; (b) multiple scales of analysis must be incorporated in recognition of the contemporary 'relativization of scale'; (c) no single institutional or organizational locus of analysis should be privileged; and (d) extrapolations from specific case studies and instances must be treated with caution, but this should not preclude the option of discussing the global economy, and power relations within it, as a structural whole. This paper advocates a network method- ology as a potential framework to incorporate these concerns. Such a methodology requires us to identify actors in networks, their ongoing relations and the structural outcomes of these relations. Networks thus become the foundational unit of analysis for our understanding of the global economy, rather than individuals, firms or nation states. In presenting this argument we critically examine two examples of network methodology that have been used to provide frameworks for analysing the global economy: global commodity chains and actor-network theory. We suggest that while they fall short of fulfilling the promise of a network methodology in some respects, they do provide indications of the utility of such a methodology as a basis for under- standing the global economy.