John Bowen

Title:	Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences Professor of Anthropology Professor of Law
Degree:	PHD, University of Chicago MA, University of Chicago BA, Stanford University
Dept:	American Culture Studies Anthropology Jewish, Islamic & Near Eastern Studies Religious Studies
Office:	McMillan Hall 133
Mailbox:	Campus Box 1114 One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 Hide Full Mailing Address
Phone:	(314) 935-5680
E-mail:	jbowen@wustl.edu

Courses
Religion, Law, and Pluralism; Social Theory and Anthropology; Religion and Ritual

Research Interests
Professor Bowen's research is concerned primarily with the role of cultural forms (religious practices, aesthetic genres, legal discourse) in processes of social change. In much of his work he has looked outward from a long-term research site in the Gayo highlands of Sumatra to the broader transformations taking place in the Indonesian nation and the worldwide Muslim community. For the past five years healso hasbeen working in France on Muslim and French adaptations to a new, plural society.

Professor Bowen's first three books examined issues of religion, culture, and politics in Indonesia. In the first, he studied changes in Sumatran political structures and cultural forms since 1900, and included analysis of oratory, song, and historical narratives. A second book traces divergences in religious institutions and ideas since the 1920s. In it, he examines how Gayo men and women draw on Islamic formulations in carrying out their activities of farming, healing, praying, and burying the dead. A third book concerned issues of legal change, and grows out of research on Islamic and civil courts in Indonesia. A forthcoming book attempts to explain the widespread support in France (but hardly anywhere else) for the recent law against religious signs in schools. Along the way, he has worked on ethnic conflict, comparative method, and the anthropology of religion.

Professor Bowen is currently working with colleagues in several departments to develop an International Initiative on Pluralism and Politics. The Initiative will build collaborative research ties with researchers in key international institutions, and support the exchange of graduate students and faculty.

Selected Publications:

2007 “Anti-Americanism as Schemas and Diacritics across Indonesia and France,” in Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Anti-Americanisms in World Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [pdf]

2006 Why the French Don't Like Headscarves (Princeton: Princeton University Press). [website]

2006 “France's Revolt: Can the Republic Live Up to its Ideals?” Boston Review, January/February, pp. 29-32. [pdf]

2004 Religions in Practice: An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion, 3rd revised edition. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon

2003 Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia : An Anthropology of Public Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1993 Muslims Through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.