Andrew Beatty

I became interested in anthropology after spending a couple of years travelling in Asia. (My first degree was in Eng. Lit.). Research on traditional exchange in Nias, Indonesia, led to a DPhil from Oxford and a book. In the 1990s, funded by a British Academy fellowship, I carried out a further two years’ fieldwork in Java. My interest was in religious diversity and tolerance: how do Muslims, Hindus, mystics, and “animists” manage to get on in spite of their differences? And what happens when the system breaks down?

The key to Java’s easygoing relativism, I found, lay in its fluid family structures and its syncretist rituals – on which, see Varieties of Javanese Religion (1999). A recent book, addressed to the general reader as well as the anthropologist, takes a different approach, mixing ethnography with the narrative strategies of fiction. A Shadow Falls: in the Heart of Java (2009) offers an intimate portrait of a tolerant and sophisticated society coping with the challenge of Islamism.

In contrast to accounts of the Islamic revival that treat only ideology and mass behaviour, A Shadow Falls shows how the turn to an uncompromising puritanism is experienced as a struggle within families, a battle between the generations and within individual consciences. For press reviews, see: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Read a debate on the book and my reply here.

In the spring, I returned to Nias and Java for updates and to continue work on emotion, a longstanding interest.

Since 1998 I have been teaching at Brunel where I convene the MSc in Psychological and Psychiatric Anthropology, the first degree of its kind outside the USA.

Research Interests

Psychological anthropology, emotion; religion and ritual; approaches to ethnographic writing; Indonesia, Mexico

PhD Supervision

Ana Mourao, working on biography and personhood among African migrants in Lisbon

Publications

Journal Papers

(2012) Beatty, A., Kala defanged: managing power in Java away from the centre, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 168 (2/3)

(2012) Beatty, A., The tell-tale heart: conversion and emotion in Nias, Ethnos 77 (3)

(2011) Beatty, A., Fieldwork's fictions, Anthropology of This Century (2)

(2010) Beatty, A., Debate, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 166 (2&3) : 299- 303

(2010) Beatty, A., How did it feel for you: emotion, narrative, and the limits of ethnography, American Anthropologist 112 (3) : 360- 376

(2006) Beatty, A., The Pope in Mexico: syncretism in public ritual, American Anthropologist 108 (2) : 324- 335

(2005) Beatty, A., Aid in faraway places: the context of an earthquake, Anthropology Today 21 (4) : 5- 7

(2005) Beatty, A., Emotions in the field: what are we talking about?, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (1) : 17- 37

(2005) Beatty, A., Feeling your way in Java: an essay on society and emotion, Ethnos 70 (1) : 53- 78

(2002) Beatty, A., Changing places: relatives and relativism in Java, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8 (3) : 469- 491

(1996) Beatty, A., Adam and Eve and Vishnu: syncretism in the Javanese slametan, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2 271- 288

(1992) Beatty, A., Variations in Nias Kinship: a View from the Centre, Anthropos 87 1- 7

(1990) Beatty, A., Asymmetric Alliance in Nias, Indonesia, Man,JRAI 25 454- 471

(1990) Beatty, A., Ovasa: Feasts of merit in Nias, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 147 216- 235

Book Chapters

(2009) Beatty, A., Emotion. In: Barnard, A. and Spencer, J. eds. Encyclopedia of Cultural and Social Anthropology. Routledge 223- 226

(2005) Beatty, A., Javanese Shamanism. In: Shamanism. Berkshire, US : ABC-Clio

(2004) Beatty, A., Ritual. In: Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. Routledge/Taylor and Francis

(2004) BEATTY, A., Javanese. In: Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals and festivals. London : Routledge/Taylor and Francis.

(2004) Beatty, A., Nias. In: Encyclopedia of the Southeast Asian Ethnography: Communities and Tribes. Delhi : Global Visions Publishing House

(2000) Beatty, A., Quoting God: Islamic and non-Islamic prayer in Java. In: Inside and outside the mosque: Muslim prayer across the Indian Ocean. Richmond, Surrey : Curzon Press

(1999) Beatty, A., On ethnographic experience: the formative and informative. In: Being There:fieldwork in anthropology. London : Pluto Press

(1990) Beatty, A., Nias. In: Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Yale, US : Human Relations Area Files

Books

(2009) Beatty, A., A shadow falls: in the heart of Java. Faber and Faber Ltd

(2001) Beatty, A., Variasi agama di Jawa: suatu pendekatan antropologi. Murai Kencana

(1999) Beatty, A., Varieties of Javanese religion: an anthropological account. Cambridge University Press

(1992) Beatty, A., Society and exchange in Nias. Oxford University Press