Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia By Daromir Rudnyckyj, University of Victoria
Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia By Daromir Rudnyckyj, University of Victoria
The author explores the intersection of the rise of neoliberalism and the utility of the ‘spiritual economy’ in the Indonesian steel plant, Krakatau Steel. Rudnyckyj takes on three main arguments in understanding how with the rise of ‘spiritualist’ and neoliberalism are working hand in hand. But first an operational definition of ‘spiritual economy’ is necessary. Rudnyckyj lays it out in 3 parts: “(1) objectifying spirituality as a site of management and intervention; (2) reconfiguring work as a form of worship and religious duty; and (3) inculcating ethics of individual accountability that are deemed commensurable with neoliberal norms of transparency, productivity, and rationalization for purposes of profit” (105). The hybridization of spirituality with neoliberalism transforms the worker from a cog in the mechanism of production to a pious individual who enacts their worship of god through self discipline, accountability, and entrepreneurial action, in work. Through appropriation of specific passages from the koran, the factory transforms the identity of the worker into a choosing individual who is made more holy through their production. The author did the majority of his field work in Banten where the factory is located between 2003-2005. The author’s specific focus is on the transition of a historic state owned factory preparing for privatization as it attempts to compete in the global markets that it was once protected from through national tariffs. The method of enforcing the spiritual economy is delivered through the Jakarta based company by the name of ‘ESQ Leadership Center’. The goal of ESQ is to utilize Islamic principles to direct management to be efficient, productive, and ‘honest’. ESQ facilitates a series of 3 days of workshops at the Krakatau steel plant beginning at 7 am and going till 6pm and the climactic third day going from 7 am till midnight. The conditions of the workshop would be manipulated to make people feel that they are undergoing a religious experience.
The author methodically outlines his argument, separates them into comprehensible and cumulative sections, and supports his work with relevant evidence from his first person experience in the field as well as relevant scholarly sources. His use of first person evidence is convincing based on the time that he spent at the steel factory and his inclusion of quotes from lower level workers, mid level managers, ESQ program leaders and the head of ESQ.
The ideas that are alluded to in this reading are relevant to the present and the history of industrialization, globalization, and neoliberal capitalism and the distinct changes that are taking hold of the commodification of the worker in our modern day. Rudnyckyj references Marx’s idea that “capitalist consumption obscures the labor that goes into the production of commodities” while spiritual economies do the exact opposite
An exciting connection that I identified in relation to another reading is the intentional utilization of the English language to denote a kind of scientific objectivism when speaking on matters of pop-psychology. This was similar to how Benedict Anderson described the creation of authority and reality through categorical definitions in Census, Map, Museum. The projection of English terms onto a foreign population, creates a kind of detached and eternal authority - appropriating the position of God.
I find it interesting and troubling that anthropological studies can, and are, being used to understand the psychology of the worker, and therefore also being used to further entrench, naturalize and maximize the efficiency and powerlessness of the worker in the global industrial complex. I do believe that the author’s approach and intent is to uncover the genealogy and the functionality of spiritual economies and the methods through which they are invented as programs similar grow globally with staggering success. A place that the author could have gone deeper was in understanding the psychology of the ‘uneducated’ workers who were not converted by the ESQ training sessions, and go to greater lengths to understand how they identify themselves in terms of their god, their work, and their community. Another interesting thread would be to understand how these beliefs change over time based on circumstances of increased/decreased pay, working hours and the prospects of privatization.
Comments
Chiara,
Your statement that anthropology can and is used to reify the exploitation of the worker within neoliberal economies is quite a thought provoking one and brings up questions around the ethnical obligations an anthropologist might have to their informants. My sense is that Rudnyckyj was not trying to “endorse” the spiritual economy at the Krakatau steel plant, and had to walk the tightrope of explicating what is going on on the ground without denouncing his informants. I personally thought that the author was writing against the Western conception that Islam is a backward, non-modern religion that is trying to take society back to the stone age. Instead, through the ESQ workshops, he demonstrates how compatible capitalism and Islam actually are.
Chiara,
In many ways, Rudnyckyj is following in the steps of Weber’s argument in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, only giving it a twist. In that text, Weber argued that there were elements of protestantism that created certain dispositions towards hard work which in turn resonated with the imperatives of capitalism. Capitalism was supposed to be “revolutionary” and wipe out old ideas with it’s own modernity and hyper-rationality. But Weber showed that it actualy depended on a kind of religiously inflected spirit. We see the same kind of “religious spirit” being channelled by ESQ people to profit maximization in Indonesia.
The difference in ESQ, however, is that there is a direct manipulation of things like belief to build commitment to the profit-seeking enterprise. It is indeed troubling, but the author is not endorsing it so much as documenting it.
It is in many ways something of an anthropological pastime to observe things in this way. Reading your thoughtful reflections on this, however, make me mindful of the need to more explicitly call out ideological manipulation.