Yesterday The Immanent Frame posted an article that might be of interest to those of you who research the intersection of religion and economics as well as to those of you who liked Pemberton’s book and want to know more about what is happening in post-New Order Java. The article is called “Post-secular development” and it is written by Daromir Rudnyckyj, author of Spiritual Economies: Islam, Globalization, and the Afterlife of Development (2010). Throughout the article, Rudnyckyj highlightes the processes by which faith has recently become the goal of development in Indonesia, thanks largely to a business-training program called ESQ.
To sum up the article, Rudnyckyj first tells of how he conducted his fieldwork in Indonesia from 2003-2005, focusing on the business practices of Krakatau Steel, a state-owned company that was a focal point in the nationalist project of modernization during Soeharto’s (here Suharto’s) regime. But now, after the 1998 Asian financial crisis and Suharto’s fall, Krakatau Steel is no longer “a symbol of modernization, development, and industrialization,” says Rudnyckyj. What once constituted its social mission (misi sosial)—particularly the creation of jobs and the elevation of living standards—has taken a backseat to its business mission, i.e., the desire for profits.
Employees recognize this fact, and worker motivation was at an all-time low until Krakatau Steel contracted a Jakarta-based company, the ESQ Leadership Center, to implement Emotional and Spiritual Quotient training. This type of training, says Rudnyckyj, lifts strategies from life-coaching programs like “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” but most centrally, it (re)imagines the five pillars of Islam as lessons for business success. It has been extremely popular and widespread throughout the country, and recently it officially became a national movement with offices in 30 out of 33 Indonesian provinces.
It is worth quoting part of Rudnyckyj’s conclusion, in which he says:
During the New Order, development was the raison d’être of government policy and practice. However, after Suharto’s spectacular collapse, the logic of enhancement and growth that underlay the project of modernization was applied to the religious practices of industrial employees who were supposed to be the purveyors of development. Islamic practice, previously relegated to the background in Indonesia, was seen both as a means to revive economic growth and as something to be developed and enhanced.
ESQ has, in other words, made workers rethink their personal stake in state development by having profits signal their own triumphs in developing faith. This tactic is not unique to businesses in Indonesia, to be sure, but KS does seem to be a really fascinating case and a sukses story in its own right.
Mostly I just wanted to share the article in light of our discussion of Marx last Tuesday, but I’m interested to hear what people think about Rudnyckyj’s findings (and the strategies of the ESQ in general) as they relate to issues that we have discussed in class, or in light of your own knowledge about religion, politics, and economics in contemporary Indonesia.
