The Post-Modern Shift

Abstract

As in other parts of the world, a deep sense of displacement, insecurity and cultural crisis has been provoked in Southeast Asia by the capitalist transfor mation of local economies and the erosion of relatively secure traditional social and value systems in the wake of globalisation. New forms of religiosity have arisen in response to the challenges of a new and increasingly post-modern way of life. In this special issue we explore how the innovative features of new forms of religiosity reflect people's changing personal and social needs under the condition of an increasingly urbanised and globalised life experience. Some of the defining socio-cultural features of the modern and, more so, the post-modern experience include a profound sense of social isolation or lack of community, a growing individualism and consumerism, heightened exposure to cultural difference through the electronic media and increased human mobility, together with an unprecedented degree of cultural and reli gious self-awareness at the level of local society. These factors can generate a perceived need for strengthening local traditions, while also seeking to adjust and adapt these traditions to the demands of greater global interdependence and a more self-conscious sense of identity. Peoples attitude towards local traditions, however, is not shaped by cultural factors alone. The revitalisations of local religious identities that are currently taking place in many parts of Southeast Asia are also pragmatic and strategic responses to a growing sense of disenfranchisement which stems from the misappropriation of local material resources and from assaults on local systems of moral and political authority by the nation-state or by multinational capitalism. In this special issue, the contributors, thus, seek to shed light on the revi talisation of local traditions and the emergence of new forms of religiosity while paying particular attention to the processes of social change in which these new forms of religiosity are embedded. In contemporary Southeast Asia, a sense of cultural crisis and fragmentation has been felt with particularly acuteness, generating demand for innovative or transformative ideas about a