BEYOND SANTRI AND ABANGAN: ANDREW BEATTY’S HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF JAVANESE RELIGION

Ngatmin Abbas; Muhammad Latif Fauzi

doi:10.61677/satmata.v4i2.1048

Authors

Ngatmin Abbas Department of Islamic Studies, Universitas Islam Negeri Raden Mas Said Surakarta
Muhammad Latif Fauzi Department of Islamic Studies, Universitas Islam Negeri Raden Mas Said Surakarta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61677/satmata.v4i2.1048

Keywords:

Andrew Beatty, historical anthropology, Javanese religion, multivocality, santri-abangan.

Abstract

Studies of Javanese religion remain strongly influenced by the santri-abangan typology, which tends to position religious identity as a relatively fixed category. Yet Javanese religious practices reveal more fluid relations among Islamic normativity, local traditions, ritual practices, authority, and cultural memory. This study aims to examine Andrew Beatty’s contribution to reconstructing Javanese religion through the perspective of historical anthropology. It employs a qualitative interpretive literature-study design. The primary source is Andrew Beatty’s Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account. Secondary sources include works by Clifford Geertz, Mark R. Woodward, and M. C. Ricklefs, together with peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2022 and 2026 on Javanese Islam, Kejawen, slametan, syncretism, changing religious authority, local ritual, and transformations of Javanese Muslim identity. Data were analysed through close reading, thematic coding, historiographical comparison, and interpretive synthesis. The findings show that the santri-abangan distinction retains historical value but becomes inadequate when treated as an essential identity. Slametan demonstrates multivocality because a single ritual can accommodate different religious interpretations without eliminating social cohesion. The concept of syncretism also proves too static when it fails to explain processes of selection, legitimation, reinterpretation, and shifting authority. This study proposes the concept of a historically negotiated religious configuration to explain Javanese religion as a configuration shaped through interactions among Islamic normativity, actor interpretation, ritual practice, social authority, cultural memory, and historical change. Javanese religion should therefore be understood as an ongoing historical process of negotiation rather than as a finished religious category.

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