Saggioro/Religious Super-diversity,4. Super-diverse Ancestors: Cemeterial Recollections as Practices of Coexistence in Rural Java

In the present contribution, I propose to extend the working notion of super-diversity originally devised by Steven Vertovec to encompass socio-religious configurations which are typically at the analytical margins of super-diversity discussions. Existing research into phenomena of super-diversity has tended to limit itself to its manifestations within urban polities, most often in the frame of Euro-Atlantic nation-states or in emergent “global cities”. By drawing on ethnographic examples from rural Java, namely the social and economic dynamics surrounding the revitalisation of nyadran cemetery rituals of communal ancestor remembrance, I suggest a different application of the super-diversity concept. Influenced by Buddhist return migrants from urban areas, revamped nyadran practices have brought about new ritual platforms in the countryside that not only converse with a complex religious landscape but make religious cohabitation (re)conceivable in a province increasingly burdened by interfaith frictions.