Response paper to Clifford Geertz: The Religion of Java (Theories of Religion and Society)

Geertz’ concept about Abangan, Santri and Priyayi is no longer enough to analyze the religious differentiation in Javanese today because he has lack of understanding of each group, especially Santri’s development today. Geertz has a great idea how to analyze and see the religio-social reality in Java with his concept of that 3 groups. But it still does not work to analyze the rapid development now, especially in Santri’s group.

Geertz has identified Javanese people into 3 groups, Abangan, Santri and Priyayi. The Abangan is a representation of farmer, Priyayi for bureaucracy and Santri for seller in the market. This identification was so helpful at the time and became the majority perspective for long time. As the time goes by, this categorization has many critics and disagreement from other scholars. The main critique is the application of those categories into the reality of Javanese today. Many critiques said that for example, if someone was identified as an Abangan now, how do We know that he is an Abangan people. If he is a farmer, it does not work well when we see that many farmers in village are Santri too, they go to mosque and pray there.

Most of the Geertz’ categorization of Javanese people is not applicable in the reality. Some scholars, for example, Abdul Munir Mulkhan had given another categorization for Javanese people, especially in Santri’s group. He categorized that know we have an hybrid group between Abangan, Santri and Priyayi. His thesis called “Santrinisasi birokrasi and Birokratisasi Santri” tells us about the diffusion of each group’s role from the sharing power in the government. This categorization is based on the research on Suharto’s era, when Suharto has recruited many people to be bureaucrats. This policy has converted many people to be hybrid group because Suharto used many terms and rules from religious values, especially Islam.

Today, the Greetz’ categorization is not imposed as majority analysis in Javanese or generally Indonesian people because it has many contradiction in the reality. Although it does not work well now, Geertz has given us the new perspective for knowing the people’s constellation since his theory was released and influenced many studies of Indonesian people.