The Negotiating Cultural and Religious Identities: The Javanese Muslim Women Who Use Shamanistic Services

Abstract

Being a Muslim and using the services of a dukun (shaman) may cause some Indonesian Muslims to experience a contradiction and an ambivalence. This qualitative psychological research explored the reasons why Javanese Muslim women used the services of a shaman and the ways in which they sought to reconcile their cultural identity as Javanese and their religious identity as Muslims. Data for this research was collected through interviews with a total of six respondents: three Javanese Muslim women and three significant others. The thematic analysis performed on the data uncovered five central themes: the social backgrounds of the three main respondents, their cultural identities, their religious identities, their decisions to get the help of a shaman, and how they negotiated the clash of their two identities. This research concluded that awareness of the conflict between cultural identity and religious identity motivated the three main respondents to justify their use of shamanistic services by highlighting what appeared to them as the action’s positive aspects.