Clifford Geertz |
The religion of Java |
| New York: The Free Press. 1960. |
Abangan RELIGION, so ritualized and so tied to custom, needs no formal training
to support it. It can be learned as almost everything else in a peasant's
life is learned, casually and concretely, through following out examples set
by others; and it persists on the basis of a constant rehearsal of its compacted
dramas, woven as they are into the whole rhythm of social and cultural life.
Prijaji mysticism demands training, but, in the absence of any concern for
orthodoxy or any hostility from the society generally, elaborate formal organization
of such training is hardly necessary; and, in fact, prijaji religious education
is quite commonly almost autodidactic. By contrast, a religion which is at
once doctrinal and important must almost necessarily rely upon a well-developed
formal school system for its propagation and for its maintenance, and "true"
Moslems are in a special position. The doctrinal complexity of their creed,
its lack of close integration with some of the basic social forms and fundamental
attitudes of peasant society, and the hostility to it on the part of most
non-santris demand that there be a special and persistent effort made to indoctrinate
those who wish to be its followers. Religiousilliteracy and backsliding, neither
of them even meaningful to abangans, are central problems for the ummat, and
the Islamic school system is designed specifically to combat them. (p. 177)
An interesting aside sketching what may have been the altogether common sense and not fully analyzed theory of "education" for anthropologists of Geertz's generation, before Bourdieu and others took "casual learning" as of interest to others than psychologists and culture and personality people.