Social and political sciences work with variety of typology. This also applies in the study of religion as has been evident in both sociology and anthropology of religion. Typology enables us to understand and analyse human and social reality with all its material and symbolic structure and signification.
In undertaking study of religion, typology matters most as to enable us to make more sense of intricate relation between practice and meaning that defines and structures religious experience, operation of religious institution and its connection to wider social, political and cultural forces and circumstances. This is actually the strength or benefit in studying religion by employing typology either to inform our epistemology or to accomplish our methodology of understanding and explaining religion of the past, the present and the future.
Typology also bears its limitation as it reflects certain epistemology and methodology. In our view there are two fundamental limitations.
First limitation is the fact that variety of factors that constitute religion as social fact and religious experience is unlikely to be fully captured by the typology. Religion as social fact and human-collective subjectivity remains open to changes and shifting over time and place. That is why typology in the study of religion should be revised or reworked as response to the shifting nature of religion and religious experience in our fast changing world.
Second limitation is the fact that none of the typology in the study of religion is value-free, nor entirely detached from certain ideological framework. Talal Asad (1993:1-54), for instance, reminds us of the risks resulting from less critical and less reflective undertaking in the study of religion.
Both orientalist or occidentalist biases are often latent in the construction and application of typology. Following the caveat, we argue that contruction and application of typology that are guided by theoretical reflexivity and practical significance will be more exposable to better comprehension of religion and religious experience, and capable of undertaking dialoque with other theories of religion and theories of culture in general.
Let us take typology of traditional versus modern societies. It has been commonplace to take the typology as presenting two fundamentally different worlds of human experience and sociability. ‘Traditional’ refers to a society marked by strong religious bonds and cultural prescriptions that binds the society to the remote past, while ‘modern’ is understood as condition of contemporary society equipped with rationality, individual autonomy, contractual-utilitarian ethics, and equality before the law.
This common sense might be helpful to make sense of social reality, but it cannot conceal the fact that contemporary modern society, for instance, is laden with values and practices attributed to traditional society. In our view, the use of the typology should be descriptive and not epistemological as to enable us in grasping the shift and the legacy of the past tradition that still linger and characterise our contemporariness.
The above assertion applies equally to analyse the influence of religion in Indonesia today. Typology that invented by Geertz and others remains significant but also needs to be revised in response to changing nature and characteristics o of religions, religious experiences, and religious politics in contemporary Indonesia. Religion as belonging to unchanged tradition or old past life-world is no longer capable of making more sense of the politics of religions in post-Reform period, a period within which religions plays greater role and responsibility to cope with contemporary problems and challenges.
Two contrasting politics of religion, fundamentalism and call for commonality, within democratic framework require us to revise long-rooted typologies and reinvent more comprehensive but reflective typology that also means in the first place reinventing new epistemology of contemporary praxis of religions.
In order to undertake the task, we can learn from the strengths and limitations of the typologies developed by Tonnies, Weber and Durkheim. Tonnies (2001:22-91) develops typology of society into Gemeinschaft/organic community and Gesellschaft (mechanical society, or civil society). Durkheim (2013:41-180) also develops similar typology (mechanical solidary & contractual solidarity). This applies equally to Weber (1978:33-56), classifying society by the nature and characteristic of social order, type of leadership and source of authority.
Despite their difference in emphasis, their typologies of society bear significance to analyse Indonesia society today. One of the significances is that their recognition of tradition, particularly religion, as constitutive of contemporary Indonesia, and to certain extent, reminds us to use traditional and modern typology more in complementary ways rather than indicating the so called ‘transition’ from traditional to modern Indonesia. With this in mind, we reiterate our argument that religion and religious experience are always contemporary, even in seemingly non-religious, secular order and capitalist culture.
Reference
Durkheim, Emile. Division of Labour in Society. See Book I “The Function of Division of Labour”, pp 41-180. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013
———–Elementary Form of Religious Life. See,”Subject of the Study:Religious Sociology and the Theory of Knowledge”, pp 1-19. New York: The Free Press, 1995
Tonnies, Ferdinand. Community and Civil Society. See, “Section I: Theory of Gemeinschaft”, pp 22-36, and “Section II: Theory of Gesellschaft”, pp 52-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001
Weber, Max. Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. See, Chapter 5 “Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism” pp 102-125. London: Routledge, 2001
———-Max Weber: Selection in Translation, (editor,W.G Runciman). See Part I Chapter 2, “Basic Categories of Social Organization”, pp 33-42; see Chapter 3 “Classes, Status Groups and Parties”, pp 43-56. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press,1978
Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. See “Introduction” and “The Construction of Religion as An Anthropological Category”, pp 1-54. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993