Organizer: Nancy J. Smith-Hefner, Boston University

Chair: Robert William Hefner, Boston University

Carlo Bonura, University of Puget Sound

Over the past five years a turn toward civil society has emerged in anthropologies of Islam in Southeast Asia. This turn is timely and politically important. The rise of a public debate over "liberal Islam" in Indonesia, the democratic potential of post-Mahathir era shifts in Malaysia’s political landscape, and the rapid disintegration of civil society in the complex conflict in southern Thailand all mark the role of Muslim politics in determining the qualities of "civility," the "public," or a future democratic politics. In reviewing this growing analysis of civil society (in works by John Bowen, Robert Hefner and Michael Peletz) it is important to first link such concerns to academic scholarship emerging from within Southeast Asia on the general question of Islam and civil society. Critical questions arise upon considering the way in which civil society itself is defined. Emphasis on concepts such as "public reasoning" or "social capital" within anthropology reflects a definition of civil society drawn primarily from liberal political theory. This essay explores the effects of this western theoretical tradition on analyses of civil society. It will also outline the relationship between secularism and civil society at times unclear in these anthropologies. Finally, I argue that this "turn" (reflecting its liberal foundations) has missed an important opportunity to develop a critique of civil society grounded in the differentiated "practice" of politics that enables a reconsideration of "the political" and of democratic community.

Daromir Rudnyckyj, UC Berkeley

This paper examines why and how corporate managers, factory employees, and self-described spiritual reformers take economic development as a problem that requires an ethical, and specifically religious, solution.  This project, which participants describe as a "spiritual reform movement," is directed toward both industrial laborers and middle-class urban professionals in contemporary Indonesia.  This paper examines the formation and conditions of possibility of new practices of "spiritual reform" that are specifically marked as Muslim.  This ethical project is expected to enhance economic productivity, reduce endemic corruption, restore relations between unions and management, and prepare employees of state-owned enterprises for privatization.  The paper draws on ethnographic research at a major state-owned industry in Indonesia that is facing not only the prospect of privatization, but also the cessation of both state investment and tariff protection for its major product.  It demonstrates how and why company managers, spiritual reformers, and factory laborers endeavor to apply Islamic ethics to time management, gift giving, labor discipline, and other social relations.  Through examination of these new rationalities of Islamic practice, the paper develops the concept "spiritual economy" to explain religious reform movements that simultaneously aspire to economic and ethical transformation.  This concept describes assemblages of religious reason and economic rationality that are intended to configure new technologies of the self.  This involves the application of religious reason and economic rationality not just to Islamic practice, but to work ethics, friendship, ethnic identity, and family life.

Mirjam Künkler, Columbia University

Opposition under Suharto took many forms: some of forthright confrontation, particularly so by student activists, some of more cautious but persistent petitioning by regime-critical intellectuals, other that of civil society organizations seeking limited but important concessions from the state, and finally some took the ambiguous form of periodical cooptation into the ruling coalition to work for change ‘from within’. This paper examines the role of Muslim activists in each of these four forums in an attempt to identify how the institutional structure of the regime affected religious-based opposition. While the positions of the large Islamic organizations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama vis-à-vis the regime have received thorough attention in the relevant literature, less light has been shed on the regime’s reaction to individual Muslim dissident activists compared to secular actors. The paper draws on fieldwork undertaken in Indonesia involving more than 60 interviews with Islamist, Muslim and secular former opposition activists as well as individuals formerly affiliated to the military and security establishment, existing accounts of military dealings with individual opposition leaders, and primary sources including programmatic publications and speeches.

Wendy D Bokhorst-Heng,

National Institute of Education / CRPP, Singapore

"To ride on China’s growth, Singapore needs a core group with a deep understanding of contemporary China. This means a bilingual as well as bicultural group of key players. Bilingualism gets us through the front door, but it is only through biculturalism that we can reach deep inside China and work with them." Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Minister Mentor, made these comments to parliament in June 2004. In response, in September of the same year, the Ministry of Education identified three of its Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools – schools that historically have a strong Chinese tradition and the only schools that offer the highest education stream – to implement a new four-year Bicultural Studies Programme. But what exactly is biculturalism, and how does one measure it? The government’s rhetoric is rather vague on the matter, and educators debate how to translate this notion into teachable moments. In this paper, we will explore the definition and operationalisation of biculturalism in the schools, looking at government rhetoric and SAP school programme curriculum. The context for this discussion is a 4-year longitudinal study currently underway by a research team of which this author is a member, in which we attempt to define and measure Chinese biculturalism in the Singapore context. Questions we seek to address include: What are the values held by young Chinese Singaporeans in SAP schools, and are these perceived by the students to be Chinese values? What is the degree of attachment among students in these schools to a Chinese identity, and what are the markers of that identity?

Nobuhiro Aizawa, Kyoto University

Under the "New Order" a series of laws and decrees were enforced by the Indonesian state to regulate the so-called "Masalah Cina" (Chinese/China Problem). The impact of these policies on the Chinese descent has been well studied. However, there has been very little written on the political and economic background and the strategic reasons for the government's decision to release and implement such laws.

This paper is a historical study of how these laws and decrees were conceived and formulated, using the archives of the Indonesian Department of Home Affairs Directorate of Social and Politics, the state agency in charge of implementing these laws. It was this office, not the immigration office, which was charged with carrying out the policy to "turn the citizen of Chinese descents into complete Indonesian" for the sake of National Unity which was the fundamental condition of Political stability, based on the Presidential Decree No 240, December 1967. This particular directorate was one of the least studied institutions of the Suharto regime, but its active role in policing the Chinese signified that it was an agency of extreme importance. Finally the study seeks to provide a clearer picture of how the Chinese problem was perceived differently by the various state institutions. The intelligence agencies, for example, regarded "Masalah Cina" as a problem of a national security while the Department of Home Affairs Policy saw as one of their responsibilities the assimilation of the Chinese into the body politic for the sake of national unity.