Between harmony and Discrimination: Negotiating Religious Identities within Majority-Minority Relationships in Bali and Lombok

It is a long journey to compile a volume in which scholars from different parts of the world participate and write about their research and experience in a sen­sitive field of human interactions, interreligious relationships in "other" societ­ies as well as in "their own." The perspectives and approaches of the contributors vary but all have striven to subtly describe, analyse and represent such relation­ships in Bali and Lombok that oscillate between harmony and discrimination. The starting point for this book was a symposium titled "Negotiating Interreli­gious Relationships in Bali and Lombok" held at Georg-August University Got­tingen in 2011 and organized by Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin and Meike Rieger. There, most of the authors of this volume presented papers, but more impor­tant was the fact that this occasion offered the opportunity to discuss encom­passing issues, now raised in this book, in a comparative way. We are grateful to Henk Schulte Nordholt, who participated as discussant, and Leo Howe for their critical comments at the concluding session; their remarks helped shape this book.

There are a great number of people and institutions that supported our work. First of all, we are grateful to all the sponsor institutions in Indonesia and beyond that permitted and encouraged the research of all the authors, and the people in Bali and Lombok who allowed us to participate in their daily life and to learn about their hopes and worries.

We would like to thank the VolkswagenStiftung, Hannover, for sponsoring the Gottingen symposium in 2011, the German Research Foundation (DFG), Bonn, for sponsoring Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin's research project on "Political Actors Performing in Temples and Temple Rituals in Bali" (2006^-2012; this was the point of departure for the symposium), the Ministry for Science and Cul­ture of Lower Saxony, Hannover, for granting the same editor a Senior Profes­sorship with a budget that made the editing process possible, and the University of GOttingen for supporting all activities related to research and publication.