M G Peletz
Biographic Data
| ID | 53418 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M G Peletz |
| GIVEN NAMES | M G |
| FAMILY NAME | Peletz |
| SIGNATURE | PELETZ M G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4108-1399 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 175 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Spirits and thieves, religious deviants and sexual/liberal others: Shifting idioms of danger, disruption, and crime talk in Malaysia
Anthropologists’ analyses of the idioms and discourses of disruption, danger, and vulnerability encountered in their fieldwork tend to be synchronic, rarely drawing on longitudinal research to engage the historical and cultural-political dynamics contributing to transformations in these domains. This article addresses the latter dynamics based on multi-sited, historically oriented ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia spanning the period 1978–2018. …
Companionate Marriage and Contested Masculinity in Late-Modern Malaysia: Ambivalences, Anxieties, and Vulnerabilities
Many parts of the world have seen a rise in companionate marriage, even though it is often imbued with ambivalences and anxieties, especially for women. Drawing on a series of mass-mediated scandals and on long-term fieldwork in the predominantly Muslim nation of Malaysia, this essay engages these dynamics, focusing on late-modern transformations in kinship and social relations and contested discourses of masculinity alleging that men are respons…
Empathy, solidarity, and the work of law and humanitarianism
Osanloo offers her book as a longitudinal study (p. 29), explaining that she conducted fieldwork and archival research for the project over a full ten years. In many ways, though, the overall thrust of the descriptions and analyses seem less longitudinal or diachronic than synchronic. I say this because the book is light on historical scaffolding relevant to sociocultural and political (as distinct from narrowly legal) developments in the post-Kh…
Hegemonic Muslim Masculinities and Their Others: Perspectives from South and Southeast Asia
This article provides ethnographic, comparative, and theoretical perspectives on Muslim masculinities in South and Southeast Asia, home to more than half the world's 1.9 billion Muslims. Its empirical and thematic focus broadens the scholarly discussion of gender and sexuality among Muslims insofar as most of the literature deals with the Middle East and North Africa and is devoted to women and the discourses and practices of femininity and sexua…
Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary
Introduction : Sharia, cultural politics, anthropology -- Sharia Judiciary as global assemblage : Islamization, corporatization, and other transformations in context -- A tale of two courts : judicial transformation, corporate Islamic governmentality, and the new punitiveness -- What are Sulh sessions? after Ijtihad, Islamic ADR, and pastoral power -- Discourse, practice, and rebranding in Kuala Lumpur's Sharia courthouse -- Are women getting (mo…
Neoliberalism and the punitive turn in Southeast Asia and beyond: Implications for Gender, Sexuality, and Graduated Pluralism
Anthropologists and other scholars have explored the elective affinities between neoliberal globalization and punitive turns in both legal and more expansive cultural-political domains, particularly in Western settings such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. This article expands the discussion by engaging these affinities in late modern Southeast Asia, especially the Muslim-majority nations of Malaysia and Indonesia. One goal o…
Neoliberal globalization, the punitive, and the pastoral
In this contribution I draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia and provide an overview of the punitive trends in legal spheres and more encompassing cultural-political domains that typically accompany neoliberal globalization. I also consider some of the pastoral developments that are commonly entangled with these trends. Finally, I point to some of the ways that my work in these areas has been inspired by Aihwa Ong's scholarship and…
Why Anthropology Doesn’t Matter Much to Law
Jeremy Kingsley and Kari Telle’s provocation article raises several important issues. The thrust of their argument as I understand it is that anthropology does not matter much to the field of law in many parts of the world. They are quick to point out, however, that this is a relative point and that their comparative frame takes as its point of departure the much greater degree of intellectual engagement that obtains between schools of medicine a…
Are Women Getting (More) Justice? Malaysia's Sharia Courts in Ethnographic and Historical Perspective
Religious law is commonly understood as deeply conservative and unfriendly to women, even when it is reform oriented and "this-worldly." This essay challenges that understanding. It does so by engaging the practice and lived entailments of Islamic family law and gender pluralism in Malaysia, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted since the late 1970s. My research reveals that sharia courts are more timely and flexible in responding to women's …
Shariʿa and Social Engineering: The Implementation of Islamic Law in Contemporary Aceh, Indonesia, written by R. Michael Feener, 2013
A tale of two courts: Judicial transformation and the rise of a corporate Islamic governmentality in Malaysia
Malaysia's Islamic judiciary has undergone noteworthy transformations in recent decades, especially in the new millennium. Two distinct periods of ethnographic observation in Malaysia, separated by a quarter of a century, afford comparative-historical perspectives on the same (but ultimately very different) Islamic court and on an illustrative case heard there in 2012. Building on Pierre Bourdieu's work on juridical fields, these perspectives all…
Malaysia's Syariah Judiciary as Global Assemblage: Islamization, Corporatization, and Other Transformations in Context
This essay concerns transformations in the judicial apparatus involved in implementing Islamic law (syariah/shari'a) in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation in Southeast Asia. Three of my goals are to delineate some of the empirical complexities of thesyariahjudiciary's day-to-day operations and the mutually contradictory directions in which it is moving; to problematize the widely invoked trope of Islamization as a gloss for these phenomena; and t…
Gender, Sexuality, and the State in Southeast Asia
My comments in this essay focus on recent scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the state in Southeast Asia and include brief remarks on some of the literature regarding Southeast Asians in the diaspora. In the interests of transparency, I begin by noting that I am an anthropologist by trade and that many of my observations pertain to writings by anthropologists and historians, though I also engage work in other disciplines
Islamization in Malaysia: Piety and Consumption, Politics and Law
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichael G. PeletzAuthor details: Michael G. Peletz is Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology, Emory University, 1557 Dickey Drive, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Gender Pluralism: Muslim Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times
This paper examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace or even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication? What are the cultural and political…
Andrew Beatty, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java
In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments. In this issue we focus on Andrew Beatty's, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java. Those invited to comment on the book are Puja Semedi, Michael Peletz and Edwin Wieiringa. Registered readers may participate in the debate
Islam and the Cultural Politics of Legitimacy: Malaysia in the Aftermath of September 11
Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia since early modern times
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009! This book examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication?…
Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times
This article develops the concept of gender pluralism to analyze historical and ethnographic material bearing on Southeast Asia since early modern times. Deployment of this concept in the context of an analysis that approaches transgenderism as an optic through which to view such pluralism entails an intervention against the grain of much writing on gender and sexuality. This intervention involves an interpretive framework conducive to the compar…
The king is dead; long live the queen
Discourses of Opposition to Marriage Equality
Ambivalence in Kinship since the 1940s
The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community
The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in. Malay Fishing Community. JANET CARSTEN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ix. 314 pp., figures, maps, bibliography, index
Beyond Scholarly Disciplines and Gender-Essentialism
Ethnographic Context and Fieldwork
Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society
Cultural AnthropologyVolume 9, Issue 2 p. 135-178 Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society Michael G. Peletz, Michael G. Peletz Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colgate UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Michael G. Peletz, Michael G. Peletz Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colgate UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: May 1994 https://…
Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times
This article develops the concept of gender pluralism to analyze historical and ethnographic material bearing on Southeast Asia since early modern times. Deployment of this concept in the context of an analysis that approaches transgenderism as an optic through which to view such pluralism entails an intervention against the grain of much writing on gender and sexuality. This intervention involves an interpretive framework conducive to the compar…
A tale of two courts: Judicial transformation and the rise of a corporate Islamic governmentality in Malaysia
Malaysia's Islamic judiciary has undergone noteworthy transformations in recent decades, especially in the new millennium. Two distinct periods of ethnographic observation in Malaysia, separated by a quarter of a century, afford comparative-historical perspectives on the same (but ultimately very different) Islamic court and on an illustrative case heard there in 2012. Building on Pierre Bourdieu's work on juridical fields, these perspectives all…
Malaysia's Syariah Judiciary as Global Assemblage: Islamization, Corporatization, and Other Transformations in Context
This essay concerns transformations in the judicial apparatus involved in implementing Islamic law (syariah/shari'a) in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation in Southeast Asia. Three of my goals are to delineate some of the empirical complexities of thesyariahjudiciary's day-to-day operations and the mutually contradictory directions in which it is moving; to problematize the widely invoked trope of Islamization as a gloss for these phenomena; and t…
The exchange of men in 19th-century Negeri Sembilan (Malaya)
The exchange of women (or rights over them) is a much-noted feature of systems of marriage and affinity, and is often regarded as a universal within the domain of affinal alliance. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that certain systems of marriage and affinity do not revolve around exchanges of women, but focus instead on exchanges of men and transactions over their labor power and productivity in particular. This paper elaborates on…
Are Women Getting (More) Justice? Malaysia's Sharia Courts in Ethnographic and Historical Perspective
Religious law is commonly understood as deeply conservative and unfriendly to women, even when it is reform oriented and "this-worldly." This essay challenges that understanding. It does so by engaging the practice and lived entailments of Islamic family law and gender pluralism in Malaysia, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted since the late 1970s. My research reveals that sharia courts are more timely and flexible in responding to women's …
Sacred Texts and Dangerous Words: The Politics of Law and Cultural Rationalization in Malaysia
This essay concerns the politics of law and culture in Malaysia. It examines how processes of cultural change are shaped by state laws and policies and the ways in which local communities are incorporated into more encompassing political entities and their attendant moral orders. I am particularly interested in 'rationalization,' a concept of central importance in much of Max Weber's work on comparative history and politics and the sociology of r…
Neoliberalism and the punitive turn in Southeast Asia and beyond: Implications for Gender, Sexuality, and Graduated Pluralism
Anthropologists and other scholars have explored the elective affinities between neoliberal globalization and punitive turns in both legal and more expansive cultural-political domains, particularly in Western settings such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. This article expands the discussion by engaging these affinities in late modern Southeast Asia, especially the Muslim-majority nations of Malaysia and Indonesia. One goal o…
Gender, Sexuality, and the State in Southeast Asia
My comments in this essay focus on recent scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the state in Southeast Asia and include brief remarks on some of the literature regarding Southeast Asians in the diaspora. In the interests of transparency, I begin by noting that I am an anthropologist by trade and that many of my observations pertain to writings by anthropologists and historians, though I also engage work in other disciplines
The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community
The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in. Malay Fishing Community. JANET CARSTEN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ix. 314 pp., figures, maps, bibliography, index
Hegemonic Muslim Masculinities and Their Others: Perspectives from South and Southeast Asia
This article provides ethnographic, comparative, and theoretical perspectives on Muslim masculinities in South and Southeast Asia, home to more than half the world's 1.9 billion Muslims. Its empirical and thematic focus broadens the scholarly discussion of gender and sexuality among Muslims insofar as most of the literature deals with the Middle East and North Africa and is devoted to women and the discourses and practices of femininity and sexua…
Gender Pluralism: Muslim Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times
This paper examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace or even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication? What are the cultural and political…
Comparative Perspectives on Kinship and Cultural Identity in Negeri Sembilan
The central contention of this paper is that important contrasts in the kinship systems of the Malays of Negeri Sembilan and the Malays of other parts of the Malay Peninsula (Malaya)1 have been overemphasized in the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that striking similarities in kinship and other areas of culture have been either glossed over or altogether ignored. This situation reflects both the normative, jurai emphases…
Moral and Political Economies in Rural Southeast Asia A Review Article
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Companionate Marriage and Contested Masculinity in Late-Modern Malaysia: Ambivalences, Anxieties, and Vulnerabilities
Many parts of the world have seen a rise in companionate marriage, even though it is often imbued with ambivalences and anxieties, especially for women. Drawing on a series of mass-mediated scandals and on long-term fieldwork in the predominantly Muslim nation of Malaysia, this essay engages these dynamics, focusing on late-modern transformations in kinship and social relations and contested discourses of masculinity alleging that men are respons…
A Share of the Harvest: Kinship, Property, and Social History among the Malays of Rembau
Neoliberal globalization, the punitive, and the pastoral
In this contribution I draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia and provide an overview of the punitive trends in legal spheres and more encompassing cultural-political domains that typically accompany neoliberal globalization. I also consider some of the pastoral developments that are commonly entangled with these trends. Finally, I point to some of the ways that my work in these areas has been inspired by Aihwa Ong's scholarship and…
Shariʿa and Social Engineering: The Implementation of Islamic Law in Contemporary Aceh, Indonesia, written by R. Michael Feener, 2013
Property and Social Continuity. Continuity and Change in the Maintenance of Property Relationships through Time in Minangkabau, West Sumatra
Moral and Political Economies in Rural Southeast Asia A Review Article
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Cultural/Ethnology: Rambu Solo': La Fumee Descend. Jeannine Koubi
Manners and Meaning in West Sumatra. The Social Context of Consciousness
The exchange of men in 19th-century Negeri Sembilan (Malaya)
The exchange of women (or rights over them) is a much-noted feature of systems of marriage and affinity, and is often regarded as a universal within the domain of affinal alliance. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that certain systems of marriage and affinity do not revolve around exchanges of women, but focus instead on exchanges of men and transactions over their labor power and productivity in particular. This paper elaborates on…
A Share of the Harvest: Kinship, Property, and Social History among the Malays of Rembau
A Share of the Harvest: Kinship, Property, and Social History among the Malays of Rembau
The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive: Systems of Marriage and the Family in the Pre‐industrial Societies of Eurasia. Jack Goody
Rice, Rupees, and Ritual: Economy and Society among the Samosir Batak of Sumatra. D. George SHERMAN with the assistance of Hedy BRUYNS SHERMAN
Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia
A Share of the Harvest: Kinship, Property, and Social History among the Malays of Rembau
Sacred Texts and Dangerous Words: The Politics of Law and Cultural Rationalization in Malaysia
This essay concerns the politics of law and culture in Malaysia. It examines how processes of cultural change are shaped by state laws and policies and the ways in which local communities are incorporated into more encompassing political entities and their attendant moral orders. I am particularly interested in 'rationalization,' a concept of central importance in much of Max Weber's work on comparative history and politics and the sociology of r…
Comparative Perspectives on Kinship and Cultural Identity in Negeri Sembilan
The central contention of this paper is that important contrasts in the kinship systems of the Malays of Negeri Sembilan and the Malays of other parts of the Malay Peninsula (Malaya)1 have been overemphasized in the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that striking similarities in kinship and other areas of culture have been either glossed over or altogether ignored. This situation reflects both the normative, jurai emphases…
Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society
Cultural AnthropologyVolume 9, Issue 2 p. 135-178 Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society Michael G. Peletz, Michael G. Peletz Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colgate UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Michael G. Peletz, Michael G. Peletz Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colgate UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: May 1994 https://…
Kinship Studies in Late Twentieth-Century Anthropology
This review examines the state of play of kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology, paying close attention to theoretical advances and shifts in methodology and intent that have occurred since the 1970s. It highlights developments in Marxist, feminist, and historical approaches, the repatriation of kinship studies, various aspects of lesbian/gay kinship, and issues bearing on the new reproductive technologies. Contemporary kinship s…
Ethnographic Context and Fieldwork
Reason and Passion: Representations of Gender in a Malay Society
This book provides a historical and ethnographic examination of gender relations in Malay society, in particular in the well-known state of Negeri Sembilan, famous for its unusual mixture of Islam and matrilineal descent. Peletz analyzes the diverse ways in which the evocative, heavily gendered symbols of "reason" and "passion" are deployed by Malay Muslims. Unlike many studies of gender, this book elucidates the cultural and political processes …
Beyond Scholarly Disciplines and Gender-Essentialism
The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community
The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in. Malay Fishing Community. JANET CARSTEN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ix. 314 pp., figures, maps, bibliography, index
Ambivalence in Kinship since the 1940s
Discourses of Opposition to Marriage Equality
The king is dead; long live the queen
Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times
This article develops the concept of gender pluralism to analyze historical and ethnographic material bearing on Southeast Asia since early modern times. Deployment of this concept in the context of an analysis that approaches transgenderism as an optic through which to view such pluralism entails an intervention against the grain of much writing on gender and sexuality. This intervention involves an interpretive framework conducive to the compar…
Islam and the Cultural Politics of Legitimacy: Malaysia in the Aftermath of September 11
Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia since early modern times
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009! This book examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication?…
Sociology (33 works) · Asian Studies and History (29 works) · Political science (22 works) · Law (21 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Anthropology (16 works) · History (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Law (12 works)