Doctoral Dissertation Research: Interreligious Violence, Civic Peace, and Citizenship: Christians and Muslims in Indonesia's Moluccan Islands

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Boston University doctoral student F. N. U. Sumanto, supervised by Dr. Robert Hefner, will undertake research on interreligious violence, citizenship, and post-conflict peace in the Christian-Muslim conflict zone of Maluku, Eastern Indonesia. The project proposes to investigate first, factors underlying interreligious violence, and, second, factors shaping the post-conflict truce and efforts to rebuild an operative structure and public culture for multi-religious citizenship in the region. More specifically, the project aims to examine the role of religious networks, organizations, discourses, and practices before, during, and after the violence, investigating which social resources aggravated local tensions, and, conversely, which contributed or is contributing to the creation of a public culture capable of mediating ethnic and religious divisions. The central focus of the project, then, is to explore the dynamics of Maluku's religious groups and civic organizations in responding to violence and the post-conflict truce, and to examine the implications of religious networks, associations, and discourses for the peace and for local understandings and practices of national citizenship. The research will utilize (1) ethnographic fieldwork, (2) network and associational analysis, and (3) the study of historical and textual materials. This project is important because it will contribute, first, to social science theories of violence, conflict resolution, citizenship, and peacemaking in multi-religious societies. Second, the project will contribute to the growing body of theory and research on the role of religion in deeply divided societies. More generally, this project will also be of direct relevance to the study of violence and reconciliation in those parts of the world that have suffered the ravages of mass violence.