Drawing on recent ethnographic research in Southeast Asia, the authors demonstrate how religious concepts contribute to meeting the challenges of modernity. Modernity is surrounded by an almost magic aura that casts a spell over people all over the world. In fourteen chapters, the authors demonstrate how religious concepts and magic practices contribute to meeting the challenges of modernity. Against this background, religion and modernity are no longer perceived as in contradiction: rather, it is argued that a revision of the western notion of religion is required to understand the complexity of 'multiple modernities' in a globalised world.

-Volker Gottowik is postdoctoral researcher in the area studies network `Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia (DORISEA) at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Heidelberg.