Spiritual Economies

Spiritual Economies

In Europe and North America Muslims are often represented in conflict with modernity—but what could be more modern than motivational programs that represent Islamic practice as conducive to business success and personal growth? Daromir Rudnyckyj's innovative and surprising book challenges widespread assumptions about contemporary Islam by showing how moderate Muslims in Southeast Asia are reinterpreting Islam not to reject modernity but to create a "spiritual economy" consisting of practices conducive to globalization. Drawing on more than two years of research in Indonesia, most of which took place at state-owned Krakatau Steel, Rudnyckyj shows how self-styled "spiritual reformers" seek to enhance the Islamic piety of workers across Southeast Asia and beyond. Deploying vivid description and a keen ethnographic sensibility, Rudnyckyj depicts a program called Emotional and Spiritual Quotient (ESQ) training that reconfigures Islamic practice and history to make the religion compatible with principles for corporate success found in Euro-American management texts, self-help manuals, and life-coaching sessions. The prophet Muhammad is represented as a model for a corporate CEO and the five pillars of Islam as directives for self-discipline, personal responsibility, and achieving "win-win" solutions. Spiritual Economies reveals how capitalism and religion are converging in Indonesia and other parts of the developing and developed world. Rudnyckyj offers an alternative to the commonly held view that religious practice serves as a refuge from or means of resistance against modernization and neoliberalism. Moreover, his innovative approach charts new avenues for future research on globalization, religion, and the predicaments of modern life.

Spiritual Economies

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.

Spiritual Economics