Negotiating Pluralism for the Planetary Community: Humanities, Culture, and the Sciences in Southeast Asia

The history of the Religion and Science Discourse (RSD) provides a good example of how knowledge production has been dominated by western understandings of both “religion” and “science.” It has largely been concerned with issues of “doctrines and discoveries,” that is how ideas from religion (mostly Christian theology) challenge and/or are challenged by the latest scientific discoveries (mostly modern, western physics, cosmology, genetics and neuroscience). This background reflects the development of the concepts of “religion” and of “science” during the European era of colonial expansion. The RSD, as it has developed, is located in a particular context and does not map on to other contexts in the world. How might we begin to de-colonize understandings of both “religion” and “science,” and the RSD? How might we begin to listen to the truths of multiple knowledge systems in a way that weaves together a common planetary understanding of our worlds, without collapsing into a single, universal understanding of reality? Asking such questions and listening to the conversations and stories that emerge from them will, we argue, help to develop a sense of planetary democracy and shared responsibility for the future of our planetary community.

This international seminar will be jointly organized by the Study Program of Interreligious Studies (Prodi IRS) and Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (Prodi Agama dan Lintas Budaya/ALB). In addition, this seminar will be co-organized together with Prof. Whitney Bauman, who is currently a Guest Professor at the Graduate School of UGM, supported by a funding from Fulbright-AMINEF (February – August 2022)

The international seminar will take place in a hybrid format (offline & offline) in two days, on June 22-23, 2022, in Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta. It consists of two main sections. The first day will be panels of invited scholars, while the second day will be parallel sessions for graduate students’s papers, which are selected through a call for paper.

The first day will consist of three panels of invited scholars coming together to challenge the colonial understandings of “religion,” and “science,” and thus the RSD. These scholars will come primarily from Southeast Asia and those scholars who study Southeast Asia.

The following are invited scholars:

1. Syed Farid Alatas (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
2. Loc Quoc Pham (RMIT University, Vietnam)
3. Joseph N. Goh (Monash Unviersity Malaysia)
4. Zainal Abidin Bagir (IRS UGM, Indonesia)
5. Fatimah Husain (UIN Sunan Kalijaga, Indonesia)
6. Nur Ichwan (UIN Sunan Kalijaga, Indonesia)
7. Dewi Candraningrum (Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Indonesia)
8. Samsul Maarif (CRCS UGM, Indonesia)
9. Lisa Stenmark (San Jose State Unviersity, USA)
10. Whitney A. Baumann (Florida International University, USA)
11. Stefano Bigliardi (Al-Akhawayn University, Morocco) (Invitation in process)
12. Michael Northcott (University of Edinburgh, UK)

On the second day we will host an open call for a graduate student seminar on the same themes.