Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book takes the position of pursuing cultural relativism a moment longer to ascertain what local interpretations and values posit about public cultural forms and what they mean for desirable futures. It uses ethnographically-based description and analysis to highlight the relations between interpretations of public cultural forms, Islam, and equalization, while paying close attention to historical contexts. The book attempts to realize "a mature theory of religion" integrating historical, psychological, sociological, and "semantic" taken here to mean symbolic and cognitivewhich Geertz states has yet to be discovered. It picks up on the issue of Islamic religious diversity, evident in ethnographic description and local interpretations of public cultural forms. The book demonstrates that while Sufi-oriented and salafi-oriented healers and discourses converge in their criticism of traditional Javanese dukun, they disagree on the contours of proper Islamic healing and models for Indonesian society.