1 - In Search of Respectability: Communal Religious Practice in Rural Java

Mosques and musollah (prayer houses) a central sites of community life in Muslim-majority villages in Indonesia. Each neighborhood (RT/RW) within larger rural villages has a mosque or musollah that is communally operated. This paper, based on a year of ethnographic research in a highland village of Batang Regency, Central Java, examines the social networks and cultural values centered on these everyday religious sites. It focuses on the community effects of religious practice – both the communal values that promote such practice and the ways in which religious practice promotes community relationships. Despite significant rural transformations – including significant rural-to-urban migration, shift away from subsistence agriculture, influences of urban culture, and commodified social relationships – communal religious practice remains a central part of rural village life in the study area.

The paper examines the various social-cultural factors through which communal practices operate – including local social ties and networks, cultural values related to family respectability and gender norms, and the fostering of social welfare. In particular, the paper argues that participation in religious practices is closely tied to cultural notions of respect and respectability – and that these values are in turn related to kinship and other social relationships in the village community. By identifying the key elements that both promote religious practice and the effects of such practice on social relationships, the paper suggest predictions on how positive social values can (or in some cases cannot) be maintained in the context of urbanization and broader social changes.