Title: SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia
Abstract: Cultural AnthropologyVolume 24, Issue 1 p. 104-141 SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia DAROMIR RUDNYCKYJ, DAROMIR RUDNYCKYJ University of VictoriaSearch for more papers by this author DAROMIR RUDNYCKYJ, DAROMIR RUDNYCKYJ University of VictoriaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 January 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2009.00028.xCitations: 169Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat ABSTRACT This essay argues that the convergence of religious ethics and business management knowledge illustrate the formation of what are termed spiritual economies. Spiritual economies conceptualize how economic reform and neoliberal restructuring are conceived of and acted on as matters of religious piety and spiritual virtue. The spiritual economy described consists of producing spirituality as an object of intervention, reconfiguring work as a form of religious worship, and inculcating an ethic of individual accountability and entrepreneurial responsibility among workers. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research, the majority of which took place at Krakatau Steel in Banten, Indonesia, this essay describes a moderate Islamic spiritual reform movement active in state-owned companies, government bureaucracies, and private enterprises in contemporary Indonesia. Proponents of spiritual reform consider the separation of religious ethics from economic practice as the root of Indonesia's economic crisis because this disjunction resulted in rampant corruption, inefficiency, and a lack of discipline at the workplace. The essay analyzes these efforts to inculcate Islamic ethics in combination with western management knowledge that is expected to enhance economic productivity, reduce endemic corruption, and prepare employees of state-owned enterprises for privatization. REFERENCES CITED Akbar, Faidil 2003 Krakatau Steel Terancam Bangkrut [Krakatau steel is threatened with bankruptcy]. Tempo Interaktif, August 18. Appadurai, Arjun 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press. Aras, Bulent, and Omer Caha 2000 Fethullah Gulen and His Liberal “Turkish Islam” Movement. Middle East Review of International Affairs 4(4): 30–42. Arndt, H. W. 1975 P. T. Krakatau Steel. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 11(2): 120–126. Asad, Talal 1993 Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press. Asad, Talal 2007 Explaining the Global Religious Revival: The Egyptian Case. In Religion and Society: An Agenda for the 21st Century. Gerrie ter Haar and Yoshio Tsuruoka, eds. Pp. 83–104. Leiden , the Netherlands : Brill. Barker, Joshua 2005 Engineers and Political Dreams: Indonesia in the Satellite Age. Current Anthropology 46(5): 703–727. Bernal, Victoria 2004 Eritrea Goes Global: Reflections on Nationalism in a Transnational Era. Cultural Anthropology 19(1): 3–25. Boellstorff, Tom 2004 Playing Back the Nation: Waria, Indonesian Transvestites. Cultural Anthropology 19(2): 159–195. Bornstein, Erica 2005 The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe. Stanford : Stanford University Press. Bowen, John R. 1984 Death and the History of Islam in Highland Aceh. Indonesia 38: 21–38. Bowen, John R. 2003 Islam, Law, and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Brenner, Suzanne April 1998 The Domestication of Desire: Women, Wealth, and Modernity in Java. Princeton : Princeton University Press. Bunnell, Tim 2004 Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor: A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes. London : RoutledgeCurzon. Butt, Leslie 2005 “Lipstick Girls” and “Fallen Women”: AIDS and Conspiratorial Thinking in Papua, Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology 20(3): 412–441. Cahn, Peter S. 2008 Consuming Class: Multilevel Marketers in Neoliberal Mexico. Cultural Anthropology 23(3): 429–452. Callon, Michel 1998 The Laws of the Markets. Oxford : Blackwell–Sociological Review. Chin, Christine 1998 In Service and Servitude: Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian “Modernity” Project. New York : Columbia University Press. Coleman, Simon 2000 The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Collier, Stephen, and Aihwa Ong 2005 Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems. In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. A. Ong and S. Collier, eds. Pp. 3–21. Malden , MA : Blackwell. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff 1999 Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony. American Ethnologist 26(2): 279–303. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff 2000 Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming. Public Culture 12(2): 291–343. Connor, Steve 1997 “God Spot” Is Found in Brain. Los Angeles Times, 29 October. Dumit, Joseph 2004 Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton : Princeton University Press. Emotional and Spiritual Quotient (ESQ) Leadership Center 2008 Grha 165.” Electronic document, http://www.grha165.com, accessed September 23, 2008. Foucault, Michel 1991 Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller, eds. Pp. 87–104. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel 2008[1979] The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Houndmills , UK : Palgrave Macmillan. Geertz, Clifford 1960 The Religion of Java. Glencoe , IL : Free Press. Geertz, Clifford 1963 Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley : University of California Press. Ginanjar, Ary 2001 Rahasia Sukses Membangun Kecerdasan Emosi Dan Spiritual E.S.Q. [The secret of success in developing E.S.Q. emotional and spiritual intelligence]. Jakarta : Penerbit Arga. Goleman, Daniel 1995 Emotional Intelligence. New York : Bantam. Government of Indonesia 2000 Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies. Electronic document, http://www.worldbank.or.id/eap/eap.nsf/2500ec5f1a2d9bad852568a3006f557d/66af15a48da09728472569af001857b6?OpenDocument, accessed December 15, 2006. Hadler, Jeffrey 2004 Translations of Antisemitism: Jews, the Chinese, and Violence in Colonial and Post-Colonial Indonesia. Indonesia and the Malay World 32(94): 291–313. Haenni, Patrick 2005 L'Islam de Marché: L'autre Révolution Conservatrice. Paris : Seuil. Hairong, Yan 2003 Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism: Organizing Suzhi/Value Flow through Labor Recruitment Networks. Cultural Anthropology 18(4): 493–523. Harding, Susan F. 2000 The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Princeton : Princeton University Press. Hart, Gillian 1986 Power, Labor, and Livelihood: Processes of Change in Rural Java. Berkeley : University of California Press. Harvey, David 1989 The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford : Blackwell. Hefner, Robert W. 1998 Multiple Modernities: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism in a Globalizing Age. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 83–104. Hefner, Robert W. 2000 Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton : Princeton University Press. Heryanto, Ariel 1988 The “Development” of Development. Indonesia 46: 1–24. Hikam, Muhammad 1995 The State, Grass-Roots Politics and Civil Society: A Study of Social Movements under Indonesia's New Order (1989–1994). Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Hawai'i . Hill, Hal 2000 The Indonesian Economy. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Hirschkind, Charles 2006 The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York : Columbia University Press. Ho, Karen 2005 Situating Global Capitalisms: A View from Wall Street Investment Banks. Cultural Anthropology 20(1): 68–96. Hoesterey, James 2007 Aa Gym: The Rise, Fall, and Re-Branding of a Celebrity Preacher. Inside Indonesia. Electronic document, http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/1011/29/, accessed August 20, 2008. Hoffman, Lisa 2006 Autonomous Choices and Patriotic Professionalism: On Governmentality in Late-Socialist China. Economy and Society 35(4): 550–570. Hotz, Robert Lee 1997 Brain Region May Be Linked to Religion. Seattle Times, October 29. Humphrey, Caroline 2002 Stalin and the Blue Elephant: Paranoia and Complicity in Post-Communist Metahistories. In Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. H. West and T. Sanders, eds. Pp. 175–203. Durham , NC : Duke University Press. Inda, Jonathan Xavier, and Renato Rosaldo 2002 The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Malden , MA : Blackwell. Jackson, Karl, and Lucian Pye 1978 Political Power and Communications in Indonesia. Berkeley : University of California Press. Jackson, Peter 1999 Royal Spirits, Chinese Gods and Magic Monks: Thailand's Boom Time Religions of Prosperity. Southeast Asia Research 7(3): 245–320. Kartodirdjo, Sartono 1966 The Peasants' Revolt of Banten in 1888: Its Conditions, Course and Sequel. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Keane, Webb 1997 Knowing One's Place: National Language and the Idea of the Local in Eastern Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology 12(1): 37–63. Klima, Alan 2002 The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton : Princeton University Press. Li, Tania Murray 2000 Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot. Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(1): 149–179. Lindquist, Galina 2002 Spirits and Souls of Business: New Russians, Magic and the Esthetics of Kitsch. Journal of Material Culture 7(3): 329–343. Lowe, Celia 2004 Making the Monkey: How the Togean Macaque Went from “New Form” to “Endemic Species” in Indonesians' Conservation Biology. Cultural Anthropology 19(4): 491–516. Lukose, Ritty 2005 Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization. Cultural Anthropology 20(4): 506–533. Marx, Karl 1977[1867] Capital, vol. 1: A Critique of Political Economy. New York : Vintage. Maurer, Bill 2005 Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason. Princeton : Princeton University Press. Maurer, Bill 2006 Pious Property: Islamic Mortgages in the United States. New York : Russell Sage. Mehta, Uday Singh 1999 Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Meilink-Roelofsz, M. A. P. 1962 Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630. The Hague : Nijhoff. Meyer, Birgit 1998 Commodities and the Power of Prayer: Pentecostalist Attitudes towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana. Development and Change 29(4): 751–776. Milnes, Jamie 2008 Global Steel Prices Expected to Peak before the Year End. Steel Grips: Journal of Steel and Related Materials. Electronic document, http://www.steel-grips.com/newsdesk/steel_prices/Global_steel_prices_expected_to_peak_before_the_year_end.html, accessed October 3, 2008. Mitchell, Timothy 2002 Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley : University of California Press. Mitchell, Timothy 2005 The Work of Economics: How a Discipline Makes Its World. European Journal of Sociology 46(2): 297–320. Ong, Aihwa 1999 Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham , NC : Duke University Press. Ong, Aihwa, and Stephen J. Collier 2005 Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Malden , MA : Blackwell. Osella, Fillipo, and Caroline Osella In press Business and Community between India and the Gulf: Muslim Entrepreneurs in Kerala, India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.). Pazderic, Nickola 2004 Recovering True Selves in the Electro-Spiritual Field of Universal Love. Cultural Anthropology 19(2): 196–225. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2002 The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham , NC : Duke University Press. Prasetyawan, Wahyu 2006 The Unfinished Privatization of Semen Padang: The Structure of the Political Economy in Post-Suharto Indonesia. Indonesia 81: 51–70. Purwadi, Dibyo Soemantri, Alfuzi Salam, Purwo Djatmiko, Sulaeman Ma‘ruf, and Zainal Muttaqien 2003 Sejarah P. T. Krakatau Steel: Memelihara Momentum Pertumbuhan [The history of P. T. Krakatau Steel: Maintaining momentum for growth]. Yogyakarta : Pustaka Raja. Rabinow, Paul 1999 French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Reid, Anthony 1988 Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680. New Haven , CT : Yale University Press. Republika 2006a 20 Ribu Guru Di Indonesia Telah Training ESQ Gratis [20,000 teachers have attended ESQ for free]. Electronic document, http://www.republika.co.id/koran_detail.asp?id=239510&kat_id=407, accessed March 14, 2006. Republika 2006b Ary Ginanjar Terpilih Sebagai Salah Satu Dewan Pakar I.C.M.I. [Ary Ginanjar selected to the I.C.M.I. Board of Experts]. Electronic document, http://www.republika.co.id/koran_detail.asp?id=235146&kat_id=410, accessed February 18, 2006. Republika 2006c Rozy Munir: “ESQ Alat Pengasah Keimanan”[Rozy Munir: “ESQ: An instrument for sharpening faith”]. Electronic document, http://www.republika.co.id/koran_detail.asp?id=248186&kat_id=410, accessed May 16, 2006. Republika 2006d Training ESQ Perdana di Tanah Papua [The first ESQ training on Papuan soil]. Electronic document, http://www.republika.co.id/koran_detail.asp?id=243159&kat_id=407, accessed May 16, 2006. Republika 2006e 500 Eksekutif Telkom Ikut ESQ [500 Telkom executives enroll in ESQ]. Electronic document, http://www.republika.co.id/detail.asp?id=189959, accessed February 2, 2006. Rofel, Lisa 1999 Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Berkeley : University of California Press. Rose, Nikolas S. 1999 Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Rostow, W. W. 1960 The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Rudnyckyj, Daromir 2004 Technologies of Servitude: Governmentality and Indonesian Transnational Labor Migration. Anthropological Quarterly 77(3): 407–434. Rudnyckyj, Daromir 2008 Worshipping Work: Producing Commodity Producers in Contemporary Indonesia. In Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature, and People in the Neoliberal Age. N. L. Peluso and J. Nevins, eds. Pp. 73–89. Ithaca , NY : Cornell University Press. Rudnyckyj, Daromir, and Analiese Richard 2009 Economies of Affect. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.). 15(1): 57–77. Rush, James R. 1990 Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860–1910. Ithaca , NY : Cornell University Press. Schrauwers, Albert 2003 Through a Glass Darkly: Charity, Conspiracy, and Power in New Order Indonesia. In Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. H. G. West and T. Sanders, eds. Pp. 125–147. Durham , NC : Duke University Press. Schulz, Dorothea E. 2006 Promises of (Im)Mediate Salvation: Islam, Broadcast Media, and the Remaking of Religious Experience in Mali. American Ethnologist 33(2): 210–229. Scott, James C. 1976 The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven , CT : Yale University Press. Scott, James C., and Ben Kerkvliet 1977 How Traditional Patrons Lose Legitimacy: A Theory with Special Reference to Southeast Asia. In Friends, Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism. S. W. Schmidt, ed. Pp. 439–457. Berkeley : University of California Press. Sharma, Aradhana 2006 Crossbreeding Institutions, Breeding Struggle: Women's Empowerment, Neoliberal Governmentality, and State (Re)Formation in India. Cultural Anthropology 21(1): 60–95. Siegel, James T. 1998 A New Criminal Type in Jakarta: Counter-Revolution Today. Durham , NC : Duke University Press. Siegel, James T. 2006 Naming the Witch. Stanford : Stanford University Press. Silverstein, Brian 2008 Disciplines of Presence in Modern Turkey: Discourse, Companionship and the Mass Mediation of Islamic Practice. Cultural Anthropology 23(1): 118–153. Strathern, Marilyn 2000 Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics, and the Academy. London : Routledge. Suharmoko, Aditya 2008 Krakatau, Garuda, BTN Cleared to Go Public. The Jakarta Post. Electronic http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/09/19/krakatau-garuda-btn-cleared-go-public.html, accessed October 3, 2008. Sutherland, Heather 1979 The Making of a Bureaucratic Elite: The Colonial Transformation of the Javanese Priyayi. Singapore : Heinemann Educational Books. [Asia] Thompson, Edward 1971 The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. Past and Present 50: 76–136. Thrift, Nigel 1998 The Rise of Soft Capitalism. In An Unruly World?: Globalisation, Goverance and Geography. A. Herod, G. O'Tuathail, and S. Roberts, eds. Pp. 25–71. London : Routledge. Thrift, Nigel 2005 Knowing Capitalism. London : Sage. Van Leur, J. C. 1955 Indonesian Trade and Society; Essays in Asian Social and Economic History. The Hague : W. Van Hoeve. Watson, C. W. 2005 A Popular Indonesian Preacher: The Significance of Aa Gymnastiar. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 11(4): 773–792. Weber, Max 1946 [1915] Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, eds. Pp. 323–359. New York : Oxford University Press. Weber, Max 2002 [1905] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Los Angeles : Roxbury. White, Benjamin 1983 Agricultural Involution and Its Critics: Twenty Years after Clifford Geertz. The Hague : Institute of Social Studies. Wiegele, Katharine L. 2005 Investing in Miracles: El Shaddai and the Transformation of Popular Catholicism in the Philippines. Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press. Williams, Michael C. 1990 Communism, Religion, and Revolt in Banten. Athens : Ohio University Press. Wise, Lindsay 2003 “Words from the Heart”: New Forms of Islamic Preaching in Egypt. M.A. Thesis, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford University . Woodward, Mark R. 1989 Islam in Java: Normative Piety and Mysticism in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. Tucson : University of Arizona Press. World Bank 2003 Combating Corruption in Indonesia: Enhancing Accountability for Development. Washington , DC : East Asia Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit. Zohar, Danah, and I. N. Marshall 2000 S.Q.: Spiritual Intelligence—The Ultimate Intelligence. London : Bloomsbury. Citing Literature Volume24, Issue1February 2009Pages 104-141 ReferencesRelatedInformation
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-02-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 233
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot