Colloquium with Prof. Rachel Rinaldo, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder

Wednesday, May 17, 2017
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

The idea that wives should be obedient to their husbands has become entrenched among middle class Muslims in Java, and many interpret this as a core teaching of Islam. In this talk, I discuss how Muslim Indonesians compensate for increased equality in public life by emphasizing religious gender schemas in the household. Yet, while Indonesian women adhere to the obedient wife schema, they also revise or reinvent it to suit their circumstances. Moreover, the rising rate of divorce among Indonesian Muslims seems to be driven by women. Thus, many women aspire to be obedient wives, but they also have higher expectations for their husbands. The obedient wife schema represents an evolving compromise position that indexes ambivalence about gender egalitarianism in public life as well as a shift toward a more companionate ideal of marriage. In this sense, it demonstrates how what appears as a strict adherence to convention may in fact be a complex social negotiation that not only responds to but produces social change.

Rachel Rinaldo is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her first book Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia (Oxford 2013) is an ethnographic study of Muslim and secular women activists. She is currently working on a study of the rising rate of divorce among Indonesian Muslims, as well as conducting research on how the Indonesian contemporary art scene is becoming globalized.

Cost : Free and open to the public.

Barbara Gaerlan
310-206-9163
cseas@international.ucla.edu

http://www.international.ucla.edu/cseas/

Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies