Output details

A shadow falls: In the heart of Java

‘A Shadow Falls’ is a narrative ethnography about the Islamic revival in Java and the challenge it poses to pluralism. It uses techniques from fiction (plotting, characterisation, dialogue, micro-historical depth), without inventing, to offer an inside view of the crisis in Javanese society. In a way impossible using conventional ethnographic reporting, it evokes the dilemmas forced on families in confronting the unravelling of traditional solutions to ideological difference. It makes the case for narrative – shorn of footnotes and obtrusive explanation - as a superior ethnographic resource, the theoretical argument for which is made in output number 2.