Summary: This research project seeks to answer the broad question: Which cognitive and cultural factors predict when scientific knowledge conflicts or coexists with religious ideas about the afterlife in Indonesia?
We seek funding for a small-scale 12-month mixed methods research project in Tana Toraja, Indonesia, on the role of scientific knowledge and supernatural beliefs on concepts of death.
This interdisciplinary project addresses the following three areas of research as identified in INSBS:
- The social scientific study of the relationship between science and religious belief
- International comparative perspectives on the study of science, religion and belief in society (3) Public perceptions of the relationship between science, religion and non-religion and their respective roles in society.
A convergent aim of this project is to grow international research collaborations by establishing a new research team and securing Tana Toraja as a field site amenable to future research.
Our working hypothesis, based on previous research in non-western contexts, is that current educational practices and societal norms concerning exposure to biological education and death in the modern west (i.e., when introduced, and how introduced) underestimate the extent to which natural and supernatural understandings of death coexist in minds across contexts because they assume a conflict account of science and religion based on popular representations.
Tana Toraja provides a unique opportunity to explore and compare cultural influences on explanatory reasoning about death further because of its stark contrast to modern western death concepts, practices, afterlife beliefs, and values.
In the proposed culturally sensitive mixed-methods study, we will conduct participant observation of key events, examine the content of science education on biological principles of life, perform semi-structured interviews with key informants (e.g., educators, religious leaders) and participants (children from age 7+ and adults). The expected outputs will be a journal article and conference presentation summarizing the findings.
This study provides an opportunity to provide a more complete and enriched account of the role of culture, formal science education, and cognition in children’s understandings of death and the afterlife with implications for exposure in western societies to education and practices about death in the home, religious settings, and in classrooms. This has implications for public policy in educational settings.
