Javanese Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Indonesia NANCY J. SMITH-HEFNER This article examines the practice and meanings of the new veiling and of Isla- mization more generally for young Muslim Javanese women in the new middle class. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic research in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta in 1999 and three subsequent one-month visits during 2001, 2002, and 2003, I explore the social and religious attitudes of female stu- dents at two of Yogyakarta’s leading centers of higher education: Gadjah Mada University, a nondenominational state university, and the nearby Sunan Kali- jaga National Islamic University. The ethnographic and life-historical materials discussed here underscore that the new veiling is neither a traditionalist survival nor an antimodernist reaction but rather a complex and sometimes ambiguous effort by young Muslim women to reconcile the opportunities for autonomy and choice offered by modern education with a heightened commitment to the profession of Islam. T HE 1970S AND 1980S WITNESSED a resurgence in the symbols and practice of Islam throughout the Muslim world. One particularly vivid expression of this religious development has been Muslim women’s donning of the headscarf or veil (in Arabic, hijab; in Indonesian, jilbab). Although in the popular Western imagination, veiling is often identified with traditionalist politics and an anti- Western rejection of modernity, contextual studies of women and Islamization suggest that the meanings of and motives for veiling are complex, varied, and highly contested. Research from diverse Muslim countries indicates that this “universalized” expression of Muslim piety often carries with it localized refer- ences to tradition, politics, class, and status, as well as public and personal ethics (Ask and Tjomsland 1998). Case studies also reveal that the new veiling is particularly prevalent not among the old and traditional but among young, well-educated, and socially assertive members of the urban middle class. 1 This is certainly the case in Indonesia, which is the focus of the present paper. Since the early 1990s, veiling has become especially widespread among high Nancy J. Smith-Hefner (smhefner@bu.edu) is an associate professor of anthropology at Boston University. 1 See, for example, research on women and veiling in Jordan and Algeria (Jansen 1998), Malaysia (Nagata 1995; Ong 1990), Egypt (Duval 1998; Macleod 1991, 1992; Mahmood 2005; Zuhur 1992), and Turkey (White 2002). The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 66, No. 2 (May) 2007: 1–32. © 2007 Association of Asian Studies Inc. doi: 10.1017/S0021911807000575