A student's reflection on the Talentime movie watched in the CRCS's Religion and Film course.

Anthon Jason | CRCS | Wednesday Forum Report

In Indonesia, people can be called by their homeland’s name, such as orang Batak, orang Sunda, orang Manado and so on. The Indonesian concepts that are tied tightly to ideas of land, community, and cosmology referred to as adat have a dynamic and complex relationship to people’s religious identification and how they understand their identities. People can be emplaced or displaced in regard to how their religious identity relates to their cultural identification with particular places. While emplacement is the process by which people identify themselves with a place, displacement is a dislocation, removal, expropriation, takeover, or ideological process to refute claims of rights over land, the use of cultural symbols, or the ability of people and groups to self-identify.

 
 

Abstract:
Every tradition in the world employs symbolism, but symbolism reaches acme in Hinduism.  However, modern communities seem to be missing the meaning of symbolism. Most of Indonesian ethnicities, especially the Balinese, hold certain views about reality of the world, including the interconnection between the reality of the world and metaphysical world, setting aside days and ceremonies to honor plants, animals, and even inanimate objects have extrinsic and intrinsic value of sacredness. Balinese Hindus are very practical in their religion, striving for the realization of God in daily life, creating oneness and unity with all life on our physical plane and seeking to become sources of light and ambasador of peace.
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. I Gusti Putu Suryadarma is an ethnologist and professor in environmental sciences. He earned his PhD at Bogor Agricultural University on Natural Resources Management. Currently he teaches at Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Yogyakarta State University.