ANTHROPOLOGY FINAL PAPER!!

Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia Author(s): Daromir Rudnyckyj Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 2009), pp. 104-141 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20484532 Accessed: 28-02-2018 04:52 UTC

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SPi:IRIUAL. EOOMIES: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary nd onesia

DAROMIR RUDNYCKYJ University of Victoria

"Who are you? Who is your God? What is your book?" yelled one member

of each of 130 pairs of Krakatau Steel employees. The interrogator embraced the

interrogated with one arm while lightly hitting the latter's back with the other.

The interrogated wept tearful affirmations of faith and repentance. The darkened

hall was illuminated only by an image of a coconut tree silhouetted against a

Technicolor tropical sunset shimmering on three huge projection screens. These

factory foremen and operators were involved in a "role-play" drawing on the Islamic

funerary practice of taiqin. This ritual consists of instructions offered to a corpse on

how to respond to the questions of the angels of death, who will visit the recently

deceased after the last mourner departs from the grave. Two business trainers

cmspiritual advisers dressed in dark business suits enacted the roles of the two

angels, Mungkar and Nakir.' They screamed into microphones while heavy metal

music blared at ear-splitting decibel levels in the background. They combined in an

animated call and response as they paced about the room. One repeatedly shouted,

"Who are you?") while the other offered answers at equal volume. These responses

oscillated among "Laa ilaa ha illal]ah. ... There is no God but Allah. . .. Wealth can

lie.... Children can die.... Allah is my flesh .... Allah is my destination.... Put

Him into your heart.... Put Him in your body .... Put Him into your marrow. .. .

My God is not property... My God is not money. . Laa ilaa ha i]lallah. ... There is no God but Allah."

In 2002, managers at Krakatau Steel implemented what they called "spiritual

reform" [reformasi spiritual] to enhance the Islamic piety of the company's 6,000

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 24, Issue 1, pp. 104-141. ISSN 0886-7356, online ISSN 1548-1360. ?D 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111 / j. 1548-1360.2009.00028.x

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

employees. For decades the factory was a key site in the state's project of nationalist

development, but was faced with a new political economic landscape increasingly

characterized by transnational competition. The managers reasoned that through

cultivating the religious virtues of the workforce they could enhance company

productivity, eliminate corruption, become more internationally competitive, and

perhaps prepare employees for privatization of this state-owned enterprise. The

scene described above depicts the climactic moment of this unprecedented initia

tive, which required staff to attend "spiritual" training sessions totaling 40 hours

over three days. The sessions drew on a stirring, if sometimes unwieldy, mix

of Qur'anic recitation, business leadership training, Islamic history, and popu

lar psychology. This training program, called "Emotional and Spiritual Quotient

[ESQ] Training," invokes both Islamic tradition and Euro-American management

knowledge in the interest of creating a more disciplined, less corrupt, company

employee. The goal of these training programs is to enable a purported "natural"

propensity for spirituality, believed an innate characteristic of every human being,

to guide the work and home life of participants.

This essay argues that this assemblage2 of Islamic and capitalist ethics in contem

porary Indonesia forms what is termed a spiritual economy.3 I offer this concept

in contrast to the notion of "occult economies" that treats religious resurgence

as a refuge from the disruptions wrought by a global "culture of neoliberalism"

(Comaroff and Comaroff 2000). In so doing, I seek to analyze similar processes

not fully captured by this approach. Rather than seeing religion as a retreat into

mystification or means of resistance against neoliberal transformations, the concept

of spiritual economies elucidates the way in which economic reform and neolib

eral restructuring are conceived of and enacted as matters of religious piety and

spiritual virtue. The concept emerges from events I witnessed and took part in

contemporary Indonesia in which self-styled "spiritual reformers" link far-reaching

economic transformations to existential questions of motivation and action. These

spiritual reformers are proponents of initiatives that combine Islamic ethics with the

principles of management knowledge to enhance Indonesia's transnational compet

itiveness. The concept of spiritual economies thus reveals how individual religious

practices are conjoined to broader projects of economic transformation as workers

are enjoined to compete in an increasingly global economy. I argue that spiritual

economies consist of three interrelated components: (1) objectifying spirituality as

a site of management and intervention; (2) reconfiguring work as a form of wor

ship and religious duty; and (3) inculcating ethics of individual accountability that

are deemed commensurable with neoliberal norms of transparency, productivity, 105

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

and rationalization for purposes of profit. This essay demonstrates that these three

components enabled a conjunction of Islam and neoliberalism.

Spiritual economies refer to projects that seek to simultaneously transform

workers into more pious religious subjects and more productive economic subjects.

The proponents of spiritual reform consider the separation of religious ethics from

economic practices as the cause of Indonesia's economic crisis. In their eyes, this

disjunction resulted in rampant corruption, a lack of accountability, and labor

indiscipline. The concept of spiritual economies elucidates how two domains,

religion and capitalism, are brought together to create a new ethical orientation

toward oneself, one's work, and one's collectivity. Islam is not merely a vehicle

in this process, as spiritual reform is taken to both enable Islamic virtue and

effect dispositions that enhance corporate productivity and competitiveness in

an increasingly global market. Self-discipline, accountability, and entrepreneurial

action are represented as Islamic virtues that should inform one's ethical conduct

both within and beyond the workplace.

Spiritual economies capture the articulation of religious practice with two

facets of neoliberalism in contemporary Indonesia: first, policies deployed to re

make the country's political economy; and second, projects of individual ethical

reform intended to elicit a type of subjectivity commensurable with neoliberal

norms. Neoliberal policies facing employees at Krakatau Steel fell under the rubrics

of economic liberalization, political liberalization, and privatization. Economic lib

eralization entailed the elimination of tariffs on imported steel, forcing the company

to compete with steel producers located outside Indonesia. Political liberalization

involved the formation of a new, and for the first time independent, labor union

at Krakatau Steel. This was part of a wider emergence of democratic political

institutions in Indonesia. Privatization entailed the elimination of state subsidies

and a turn toward soliciting private investment from foreign and domestic capital

markets. Krakatau Steel would no longer be guaranteed infusions of state devel

opment funds that for years enabled the modernization of aging plant facilities.

Workers at the factory referred to these transformations as reflecting a broader

change in the purpose of the company "from a social mission to a business mission."

Prior to the end of the Suharto regime the company was considered a vehicle for

social development and enhancing the living standards of relatively well-educated,

middle-class Indonesians. After the 1998 economic crisis, in which the Indonesian

government agreed to privatize state-owned enterprises as a condition of the Inter

national Monetary Fund's (IMF's) $40 billion bailout, the company's social mission

106 was no longer a foremost concern of government officials and company managers.

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

However, I do not treat neoliberal reform as merely the implementation of an

abstract set of policies. Rather, I draw attention to the actual practices constitutive

of neoliberalism. Building on this approach, I treat neoliberalism as a form of

practical action, not as an abstract doctrine (Foucault 2008:318; Hoffman 2006).

Thus, I show how specific forms of management and spiritual knowledge were

mobilized to create new forms of life and labor. I describe how mass-mediated

spiritual training programs, books, and manuals for living a life were designed to

inculcate individual accountability, responsibility, and self-management. I argue

that managers, state technocrats, and religious reformers sought to enact a set

of neoliberal practices by creating a new type of subject, a worshipping worker,

for whom labor was a matter of religious duty. Thus, my focus is more on the

assemblages created through the combination of different cultural forms, rather

than on the homogenizing thrust of one form over another.

The concept of spiritual economies delineates points of convergence between

"the global religious revival" (Asad 2007) and economic globalization. Both of

these processes have been the focus of recent anthropological interest, but for

the most part they have been treated separately. Comparatively little work exists

that demonstrates the connections between religious resurgence and neoliberal

transformation. On the one hand, anthropologists have drawn attention to the

dramatic resurgence in religious practice in many parts of the contemporary world

(Coleman 2000; Harding 2000; Hefner 1998; Hirschkind 2006). Another body

of research has examined globalization as the intensified integration of production

systems, financial activities, and labor markets across national borders (Appadurai

1996; Harvey 1989; Ong 1999; Rudnyckyj 2004). However, few scholarly accounts

have treated the global religious revival and economic globalization within the same

conceptual frame. For example, two recent edited collections on the anthropology

of globalization contain a total of only two articles that consider religion (Inda and

Rosaldo 2002; Ong and Collier 2005).

This convergence of economic transformation and religious piety that I term

a spiritual economy may shed light on similar assemblages occurring elsewhere. In

other parts of Asia, movements that link religious practice to productivity and profit

have been documented. In Taiwan, one such movement draws on a vocabulary and

set of "spiritual" practices strikingly similar to those used by Indonesian spiritual

reformers (Pazderic 2004). Protestant evangelism has produced unprecedented

amalgamations of spiritual practice and economic desire in Latin America and

Africa (Bornstein 2005; Cahn 2008; Meyer 1998). The former Soviet Union has

seen a stunning rise in religious practice in the wake of the massive political and 07

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

economic transformation following the end of the Communist Party's hold on

state power (Humphrey 2002; Lindquist 2002). New proselytizers have emerged

who preach both Muslim piety and entrepreneurial activity in Africa, South Asia,

Europe, and the Middle East (Aras and Caha 2000; Osella and Osella in press;

Schulz 2006; Wise 2003). Others seek to develop alternative financial instruments

that enable Muslims to participate in the global economy, while abiding by Islamic

prohibitions on usury (Maurer 2005, 2006). I argue that a hallmark of contemporary

neoliberalism is that it seems to enable assemblages of religion and economics that

certain strands of social science theory have held a part.

To elaborate the definition of spiritual economies, first I contextualize the

introduction of Islamic proselytization at Krakatau Steel. I focus on the conjunction

of the introduction of spiritual reform with accelerating plans for the privatization

of the company and the transition to a steel market increasingly defined in global,

rather than national, terms. Next, I contrast spiritual economies with moral and

occult economies to clarify the theoretical stakes of the argument. Subsequently,

I illuminate the three components of spiritual economies that emerged during the

period I carried out fieldwork in Indonesia between 2003 and 2005. Finally, I suggest

the utility of a concept of spiritual economies in comprehending articulations of

religious resurgence and economic globalization in Indonesia and beyond.

ASSEMBLING INDUSTRIAL AND ISLAMIC REFORM Krakatau Steel is located in Banten, a new province founded in 2000, but based

on the boundaries of an early modern Islamic sultanate. Banten was a critical node

in 16th- and 17th-century Southeast Asian trade networks (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962;

Reid 1988; Van Leur 1955) and has thus been long connected to other parts of Asia

and the Pacific. Islam has been an important aspect of the identity of inhabitants

of Banten, who are routinely considered second only to the Acehenese in the

strength of their Islamic piety by Indonesians (Williams 1990). One illustration

of this strong Islamic identity is that in the 19th-century Banten had the highest

percentage of inhabitants who had completed the hajj of any regency in Java

(Kartodirdjo 1966:332). Although the majority of Krakatau Steel employees were

not born in Banten and do not identify as ethnically Bantenese, the devoutly

Islamic environment in Banten made religious affiliation pressing concerns for both

newcomers and those with longer ties to the region.

Banten's accessibility to sea-based trade networks was central in the 1956 deci

sion by Sukarno' s nationalist government to locate Indonesia's first steel works in the

region. The initial iteration of Krakatau Steel was funded with Soviet development 108

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

aid and technological expertise (Purwadi et al. 2003). Its strategic location on

the Sunda Straits was likely an important consideration for the Soviet advisers

who favored this site over other possibilities in East Java. Although construction

ceased following the military coup of 1965 that brought Suharto to power, it was

resuscitated in the early 1 970s as a centerpiece of national development under the

import substitution industrialization prong of Indonesia's New Order development

strategy (Arndt 1975; Hikam 1995). Krakatau Steel produces a material that was

absolutely critical to the state's nationalist development project and occupied an

iconic position, receiving frequent visits from the Indonesian President and other

dignitaries. Today, the company is the largest steel factory in Southeast Asia and

site for the production of half of the total steel produced in Indonesia (Akbar 2003).

Because of the affirmative action-style hiring policies of the Suharto state,

many state-owned enterprises in Indonesia have high percentages of Muslim em

ployees. Indonesia's Muslim population of roughly 200 million gives it the world's

largest number of Muslim inhabitants located within a single nation. Muslims dwarf

the country's other religions, constituting about 90 percent of the total population

(Hefner 2000:6). Islam is often a key criterion in defining indigenous Indonesians,

although not necessarily the only one (Li 2000). At state-owned enterprises, how

ever, the percentage of Muslim employees is even higher than among the national

population because these companies were used by the regime as vehicles for en

hancing the living standards of so-called "indigenous" [pribumi] Indonesians who

were economically disadvantaged in comparison to those labeled Chinese under

the Dutch colonial regime (Hadler 2004; Rush 1990). In 2004, Krakatau Steel

managers reported that 97 percent of the company's 6,000 permanent employees

were Muslim.

Over the past four decades Krakatau Steel received billions of dollars in

state development aid. However, the Asian financial crisis and the end of the

Suharto regime presented the company with a number of pressing challenges. These

challenges are associated with "Reform" [Reformasi], which is how Indonesians refer

to the political and economic transformations that have occurred in the country

since 1998. Reformasi simultaneously refers to political changes in the form of

increasing democratic governance and economic changes in the form of greater

transparency, free markets, and merit (rather than patronage) based systems of

competition, compensation, and promotion.

Reformasi had wide-ranging effects at Krakatau Steel. For years state funds

had guaranteed the company's viability, but these were eliminated in 1998 after the

near bankruptcy of the Indonesian government. Tariffs on imported steel that had 109

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

long protected the company from international competition were fully eliminated

in April 2004, during the period when the fieldwork for this research project

took place. Furthermore, China has emerged as a new global steel producer and

employees fear that once the demand for steel within China begins to ebb, as it

inevitably will, China will in turn flood the Indonesian market with cheap, low-cost

steel. Finally, new legal protections for workers offered unprecedented possibilities

for political mobilization by factory employees, including the formation of a new

(and for the first time independent) labor union, thus creating a freer labor force.

By the early 2000s, many company employees, journalists, nongovernmen

tal organization (NGO) activists, and academic observers had concluded that the

economic challenges associated with Reformasi would ultimately lead to the pri

vatization of Krakatau Steel. Privatization of state-owned enterprises was a critical

condition of the IMF's $40 billion bailout of the Indonesian government in the

wake of the 1998 Asian financial crisis (Prasetyawan 2006). Under the terms of

this agreement, foreign companies would be the primary investors and private

ownership was expected to create "efficient and viable enterprises" (Government

of Indonesia 2000). Krakatau Steel employees heatedly debated the merits of pri

vatization. Those opposed to privatization expressed a fear of job losses after the

shift from state to private ownership. Employees who favored privatization were

motivated by the fear that the company could no longer rely on state investment

for the modernization of ageing production facilities and would thus go bankrupt

because of an inability to compete in an increasingly global steel market.

As debates over the merits and course of privatization flared among factory

employees, managers at Krakatau Steel turned to Islamic spiritual reform to create

an "efficient and viable enterprise." They contracted a Jakarta-based company, the

ESQ Leadership Center, to introduce spiritual training at the company. The founder

of ESQ, Ary Ginanjar, has drawn ideas for the training program from different

iterations of management knowledge and practice that have greatly expanded in

North America, Asia, and Europe in recent decades (Thrift 1998). He has sought

to fuse corporate trainings and life coaching programs, like the Seven Habits of

Highly Effective People, with a literal interpretation of Islamic practice. Thus, he

sees Reformasi as not so much a matter of structural political and economic change

as a matter of individual ethical and moral reform.

In the multiday training sessions that his company offers, Ginanjar stresses

that Islamic piety should not simply be restricted to religious worship, such as

during one's daily prayers. Instead, he argues that principles conducive to modern

business and management can be found in Islamic practice and Qur'anic doctrine. 110

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

For example, drawing on what he terms "the ESQ model," Ginanjar instructs

participants in these training programs that the third pillar of Islam is a directive

for business success. Thus, the duty to give alms (zakat) is represented as divine

sanction for "strategic collaboration" and exercising a "win-win" approach in both

business transactions and relations with coworkers. Ary Ginanjar further asserts

that the fourth pillar of Islam, the duty to fast during Ramadan, is a model for self

control and self-management. On the basis of this principle, ESQ seeks to inculcate

the obligation to constrain worldly desires to ensure otherworldly salvation. Cor

ruption, which is represented as a result of the longing for material possessions, is

depicted as contrary to this divine injunction of individual accountability.

These training sessions find appeal across contemporary Indonesia, primarily to

an educated audience of middle- and upper-middle-class participants. At Krakatau

Steel mid- and lower-level managers were the primary targets of spiritual training.

The training was, however, also extended to employees at lower levels of the

company hierarchy, such as foremen and operators, although with less success.4

At the end of the second day of a session with an audience that consisted mostly

of operators, I spoke with Rinaldi, Ary Ginanjar's brother who had taken over as

the lead ESQ trainer at Krakatau Steel midway through my fieldwork. He had an

exhausted look on his face. It was one of the few times that I saw anyone associated

with ESQ appear frustrated or disconsolate as employees of the company habitually

presented a sunny countenance. Many members of the audience had cracked jokes

in the audience during Rinaldi's oration and audiovisual presentation, in spite of

his repeated ministrations for the audience to be "orderly and polite" (tertib dan

sopan). He explained to me that because those in the audience were "uneducated,"

easily lost focus, and were not able to follow along with the message of the training.

He said, "sometimes they cannot follow it, when I use English or refer to scientific

literature." Haji Alwani, a local political and religious leader who was invited

by Krakatau Steel to attend ESQ at the company's education and training center

expressed a similar sentiment. He said that he doubted that ESQ would be effective

for the "people" (rakyat) in his village (kampung) and that the messages were more

tailored to "the middle class [orang-orang menengahi who were educated." He said

that this was because of the fact that many foreign words and scientific concepts

were used during the training and these would be unfamiliar to uneducated people.

At Krakatau Steel ESQ training sessions were held once or twice per month

except during Ramadan and the hajj pilgrimage season. They were most often held

in the large multipurpose room of the factory's education and training center,

which could accommodate over 300 participants at a time. The sessions ran for

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

three consecutive days, usually from Friday through Sunday, but also sometimes

in the middle of the week. The first two days started at 7:00 a.m. and lasted

until just before the maghrib prayers,5 which usually begin around 6:00 p.m. in

Indonesia. The third day of the training involved both the climactic self-confession

session described at the beginning of this essay and the program's denouement,

which consisted of a simulation of three of the events that take place during the

hajj pilgrimage to Mecca: tawaf, the circumambulation of the kabbah, the sa'i, a

ritual that consists of running seven times back and forth between the hills of Safa

and Marwah in Mecca,6 and the stoning of jamrat al-aqabah, in which pilgrims hurl

rocks at three representations of the devil.7 This final day ran from 7:00 a.m. until

almost midnight.

ESQ followed the conventions of other manifestations of management knowl

edge that Nigel Thrift has described as "knowing capitalism" (Thrift 2005). Like

many other forms of management knowledge the training was structured through

what is becoming a ubiquitous global form for conveying information, a Microsoft

PowerPoint presentation. This presentation consists of the usual slides with graphs,

charts, tables, and a litany of bullet points, but also with spliced film clips, col

orful photographs, and popular music. The training was delivered primarily as

an interactive lecture in which the main trainer would alternate between en

gaging with the audience in the familiar style of a television talk show host and

proceeding to deliver fiery and profoundly emotive lectures evocative of U.S.

televangelists.8

In addition to lectures, the assistant trainers would often perform skits to

illustrate the main points of the training. Interactive games, participatory role

play, and calisthenics were deployed to break up the monotony of sitting and

listening. There were also a plethora of light-hearted activities that seemed intended

to encourage participants to be comfortable acting in ways unfamiliar in a work

setting. For example, participants sat in three sections with two aisles dividing the

groups and at one point the section that performed most poorly on a collective

cheer, as judged by the trainer, had to perform the hokey-pokey along with an

animated video of the dance intended for children. To elicit certain embodied

dispositions, the physical environment was carefully calibrated. The sound in the

hall was often elevated to earsplitting volume and the lights in the room were

manipulated to maximize the dramatic effects of the points made. Further, the

air-conditioning was turned to its lowest setting creating a disconcerting chill in

an otherwise steamy tropical climate. Participants would take regular breaks for

snacks and meals. 112

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

Although Krakatau Steel was one of the first companies to embrace ESQ,

the program has now spread extensively across Indonesia. In addition to Krakatau

Steel, this training program was initiated at some of Indonesia's most prominent

governmental institutions and state-owned enterprises including the Directorate

General of Taxation; Pertamina, the national oil company; Telkom, the country's

largest telecommunications company; and Garuda, the nation's flag air carrier

(Republika 2006a, 2006d, 2006e).

State ministers, both past and present, are enthusiastic proponents of ESQ.

Rozy Munir, the Minister for State-Owned Enterprises during the former adminis

tration of President Abdurrahman Wahid, completed the training and was quoted in

the national newspaper Republika attesting to the benefits of ESQ for corporate em

ployees (Republika 2006c).9 While I was conducting fieldwork for this project in late

2004, Sugiharto, then the newly appointed Minister for State-Owned Enterprises,

issued a letter "recommending" that employees of all state-owned enterprises in

Indonesia complete the ESQ training program. This is a vast pool of over 100

companies, all of which have established budget categories for employee training.

In a news conference prior to this announcement, when journalists asked Sugiharto

how he intended to combat rampant corruption in his ministry, he invoked ESQ

as the primary means his new administration planned to use toward this end.

In just five years ESQ grew spectacularly (see Figure 1). In addition to offering

programs at some of Indonesia's largest companies, the company does a brisk

business in so called "public" trainings. Participants in these public programs pay up

to $ 350 out of their own pockets to participate. Ary Ginanjar said that these events,

which attract as many as 1,000 participants at a time, are his biggest growth market.

Recently ESQ has met its goal of becoming a national movement, establishing branch

offices in 30 out of 33 Indonesian provinces.10 In late 2005, the ESQ Leadership

Center broke ground for a 25-story office tower and convention center in south

Jakarta funded in part through investment shares sold to past participants (ESQ

2008). By May 2008, the convention center was complete and work continued on

the high rise in spite of Indonesia's precarious economic position. The company

planned to lease much of the office space to multinational corporations with offices

in Jakarta.

The connections among work, worship, and individual ethical transforma

tion is apparent in other contemporary projects of spiritual reform in Indonesia

and Muslim communities elsewhere (Haenni 2005; Osella and Osella in press;

Silverstein 2008).1 In addition to the ESQ program another manifestation of what

is referred to by proponents and participants as "spiritual reform" in Indonesia 113

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

Cumulative number of ESQ "alumni" at year end since inception

2001 43

2002 1,700

2003 15,000

2004 45,000

2005 138,000

2006 269,000

2007 465,000

FIGURE 1. Number of ESQ "alumni" (appellation attributed to ESQ participants who had completed the training). Sources: http://www.esqwayl65.com, accessed July 30, 2008; and

http://www.esqkepri.com/joomla, accessed July 30, 2008.

is the hugely successful Islamic business called Manajemen Qolbu Corporation

(Watson 2005). This Islamic media and direct marketing conglomerate uses first

an English-derived term (manajemen) and then an Arabic word (qolbu) to yield a

name that translates as "Management of the Heart Corporation." The company was

founded by the charismatic engineer-turned-television preacher Abdullah Gymnas

tiar, widely known as Aa Gym, who is one of the most recognizable public figures

in Indonesia. 12

SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES The concept spiritual economies complements the notion of occult economies

(Comaroff and Comaroff 1999, 2000), but elucidates an articulation between the

global religious resurgence and economic globalization that is not quite captured

by the latter. Comaroff and Comaroff define occult economies as "the deploy

ment of magical means for material ends or, more expansively, the conjuring of

wealth by resort to inherently mysterious techniques, techniques whose principles

of operation are neither transparent nor explicable in conventional terms. These

techniques, moreover, often involve the destruction of others and their capacity to

create value" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999:297 n. 31). The inability of modern

ization to deliver on the promise of development has led to a resurgence of religious

and occult practices as a refuge from the violence of structural adjustment and other 14

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

neoliberal reforms. Comaroff and Comaroff base their argument on sensationalist

accounts of magic and scandal such as witchcraft and the killing of accused witches,

the resurgence of zombies, pyramid schemes, and the illicit sale of body parts. In

contrast, the empirical material from which spiritual economies emerge are the

actual practices inside key sites of industrial production where the assemblage of

religion and neoliberalism is designed to address the challenges of globalization.

Occult economies emerge out of the proliferation of two kinds of unreason.

On one hand, those people subject to neoliberal interventions can only comprehend

these transformations by resorting to magic and mystification. Those who have seen

their lives disrupted in dramatic ways resort to supernatural forces to make sense

of these changes. On the other hand, they refer to the way in which neoliberal

policies are spread as a religious gospel. In contrast, spiritual economies point to

a set of ascetic practices that involve individual ethical transformation to instill

neoliberal values such as transparency and accountability. This is not ascription

to a totalizing gospel, but rather the mobilization of a specific set of religious

techniques to address particular problems. Thus, religious practice is mobilized

not as a retreat into magic and mystery, but rather the inculcation of a set of ascetic

practices designed to transform oneself into a different type of being (Asad 1993;

Weber 2002). Methodologically, I presume that those enmeshed in the spiritual

economy described here understand their predicament at least as well, if not better,

than the ethnographer.

Finally, occult economies are premised on Marx's argument that capitalist

consumption obscures the labor that goes into the production of commodities

(Marx 1977). Spiritual economies entail not so much the abstraction of labor, but

making it more concrete. During my fieldwork this was apparent in two ways.

First, was an emphasis on individual accountability that called on workers to reflect

on their own labor practices and see their labor in relation to the larger structural

transformations in which they are enmeshed, such as transnational competition

and the privatization of state-owned firms. This does not involve the abstraction

of labor, but, rather, making it more visible by treating it as religious worship.

This was apparent in the proliferation of discourses about work engaged in by

employees, managers, and spiritual reformers. Second, spiritual economies are

premised on implementing transparency, a critical neoliberal value. Corruption,

a practice widely viewed as endemic to state-owned enterprises in Indonesia was

previously concealed, but was rendered visible as a focus of reflection during

spiritual training.

115

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:I

Spiritual economies involve efforts to connect individual religious piety to

projects of economic transformation and development. The concept builds on James

Scott's notion of "moral economy" (1976) in so far as I challenge approaches that

see economies as a natural reflection of a universal model of human behavior based

on rational choice. Scott contributed to E. P. Thompson's formulation of moral

economies (Thompson 1971) by drawing attention to the crucial role of patron

client networks in Southeast Asia before the massive transformations precipitated

by the introduction of colonial capitalism. These networks were characterized by

reciprocity between those of unequal social status.

However, in contrast to the moral economies identified by Scott, spiritual

economies illuminate the cultivation of individual ethical practice. My focus is not

so much on the social ties in which economic relations are embedded, but rather on

the specific techniques that are mobilized to create subjects commensurable with

new economic arrangements. In Scott's formulation, clients accept outwardly

exploitative economic arrangements because of an implicit understanding that

patrons will provide for them in the event of hardship. A spiritual economy

depicts a social landscape where such ties are increasingly absent. Whereas a moral

economy is dependent on a relation of reciprocity, in spiritual economies this

ethic of reciprocity is replaced by an ethic of individual accountability to God.

Thus, spiritual reform sessions at Krakatau Steel consistently emphasized that

employees were to be proactive, responsible, and accountable. These values were

represented as simultaneously conducive to corporate success and otherworldly

salvation. Furthermore, those enmeshed within this spiritual economy were trained

to make judgments about such factors as time, productivity, and corruption based

on a particular interpretation of religious duty.

The increasing emphasis on individual accountability was a common topic of

discussion among factory employees at Krakatau Steel. One foreman in the slab

steel plant at Krakatau Steel explained to me that prior to the mid- 1 990s the

"the social was the most important and profit was secondary," but "now profit is

number one and the social mission [misi sosial] is number two." Employees and

other Indonesians referred to the "social mission" that characterized the earlier

period as padat karya, which literally translates as "dense work" and refers to

the past practice of hiring more workers than necessary for production tasks.

This practice is common at many Indonesian companies, including both state

owned enterprises and private corporations. At Krakatau Steel, an active and vocal

debate pitted those who saw the company's mission as "supporting the livelihoods

. of the masses" [hajat hidup orang banyak] against those that sought to make the 116

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

company competitive in an increasingly global steel market by reducing its labor

costs. The values characteristic of the "social mission" are similar to those outlined

by Clifford Geertz in his studies of village Java. The notions of padat karya and

hajat hidup orang banyak evoke shared poverty and patterns of work spreading that

Geertz observed during the 1950s and 1960s (Geertz 1963). 13 Geertz interpreted

an ethics of shared poverty as the primary obstacle to economic development,

or "takeoff' in the parlance of modernization theory (Rostow 1960). Today the

problem for state technocrats, development agencies, and corporate managers is

not so much overcoming cultural barriers to enable Indonesia to proceed along

the track toward modernity. Rather they seek to combine localized cultural norms

with outside values to become more globally competitive.

Labor rationalized according to social principles (providing more compara

tively good paying factory jobs and distributing particularly strenuous activities), as

opposed to economic principles (avoiding redundancy and maximizing efficiency),

mirrors the ethics of work spreading identified by Geertz. However, company

managers have made the decision that, in the long term, such an arrangement is

untenable. At Krakatau Steel, patterns of institutionalized work spreading were ap

parent in one especially intensive portion of the production process where molten

steel is cast into solid slabs, weighing 10 to 30 tons each. Hariyanto had the arduous

task of ensuring the smooth exchange of molten steel from giant ladles into the

casting machine.14 He took turns with a coworker in half-hour blocks to monitor

this transfer. The heat and noise generated in this portion of the steel-making

process made it a physically demanding job, but Hariyanto said that rotating the job

with another employee made it tolerable because the stress of the job was "divided

in two" [dibagi dua]. He was aware, however, that the job could likely be performed

by a single employee and feared that his position, a single task performed by two

people, would be made redundant should privatization occur. At stake in priva

tizing Krakatau Steel is the rationalization of a latter-day incarnation of practices

of work spreading. Displaced from the agrarian countryside, practices similar to

those observed by Geertz were integrated into industrial production during the

New Order.15 The tension between the company's social mission and its business mission

was acute. One general manager told me that a 1995 Booz, Allen, and Hamil

ton management-consulting audit of the company asserted that one-quarter of

the company's total workforce was superfluous, corresponding to at least 1,500

permanent, full-time job positions. Some Krakatau Steel employees suspect that 117

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24.

planned privatization will lead to the elimination of many of these positions. Man

agers often cited this latter-day practice of work spreading as a rationale for poor

job performance at the company, claiming that employees at the company lacked

motivation because they knew that they were unnecessary.

MANAGEMENT OF THE SPIRIT

The concept of spiritual economies builds on approaches that treat economies

not so much as an autonomous, natural realm of exchange and consumption, but

rather as a zone for producing subjects and eliciting forms of practice (Callon 1998;

Foucault 1991; Mitchell 2002, 2005). I argue that in contemporary Indonesia, Islam

is invoked to elicit subjects commensurate with norms of efficiency, productivity,

and transparency. In diagramming this spiritual economy, I will show how Islam

serves as a medium through which subjects of spiritual reform are made accountable

to themselves, their families, their work, and the nation at large.

Spiritual economies in contemporary Indonesia were visible when proponents

of spiritual reform posed the question of self-government and linked it to govern

ment of the family and the nation. For example, self-government was posed as an

alternative to ongoing efforts to implement Islamic syariah law in Indonesia (Bowen

2003:173-199). In early 2004, Rinaldi, Ary Ginanjar's brother, illustrated how

spiritual reform was not simply a matter of "more rules," but of the formation of

a self-managing subject. He said, "We already have enough rules ... but if you

touch them here [gesturing to his chest], in the heart, they don't need rules. They

won't accept commission,16 even without more rules." In the years following the

end of the Suharto regime, a number of groups advocated the implementation of

syariah law for all Muslims in Indonesia. These included groups like Hizbut Tahrir,

a prominent global group of Muslim intellectuals also active in Indonesia, and

branches of the Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars [Majelis Ulama Indonesia or

MUI]. However, spiritual reformers explicitly contrast their project with these

efforts. ESQ is intended to inculcate an ethic of individual self-policing based in

Islamic practice in contrast to these calls for the state to enforce religious doctrine

for the Muslim population. Spiritual reform is not designed to implement further

rules and regulations, but rather to elicit an ethic of self-government, which was

referred to as "built-in control."

This spiritual economy entailed a total way of life within which the population

was represented at a number of different scales. At the most elementary scale it

involved a set of ethical practices of individual transformation intended to link

personal spirituality to a broader project of national economic reform. These 118

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

included things like repenting for past sins to become more honest in the future.

It also involved work on the self that sought to create "economies of affect" in

which techniques to "manage one's emotions" and relate better with coworkers

were introduced (Rudnyckyj and Richard 2009).

This spiritual economy likewise operated on the family, both in terms of

content and participation. Family relations were invoked as something to be ad

dressed through spiritual reform and participants were encouraged to introduce

the training to family members. During ESQ sessions, participants were constantly

admonished to remember their obligations toward family members. Relationships

between parents and children were a recurring theme. Participants were called

on to remember and ask for forgiveness for improprieties against female parents.

At training venues ESQ staff circulated promotional material advertising shorter

one and two-day-long sessions especially designed for younger audiences such as

"ESQ Teens" and "ESQ Kids." A number of times ESQ participants told me that

they had encouraged their spouses to attend after their own participation. I met

several adherents who proudly told me that every one of their family members had

attended ESQ training.

Furthermore, this emergent spiritual economy links not only selves and fam

ilies, but also the Indonesian nation at large. Ary Ginanjar designed the program

to strengthen the human resources of the entire population of the country. The

ESQ Leadership Center launched a program called "Developing a Golden Indonesia

2020" [Membangun Indonesia Emas 2020], which is premised on the idea that spiritual

reform can enhance national development. Ginanjar emphasizes that management

knowledge, the principles of business success and personal development used by

Western corporations and exhaustively detailed in the vast management literature,

can be found in the Qur'an and the hadith. 17

Ginanjar sees the economic crisis and Indonesia's stalled economic develop

ment as spiritual problems. Echoing former Prime Minister Mahatir Mohammed's

"Vision 2020" project in neighboring Malaysia (Bunnell 2004; Chin 1998), Ginan

jar's "Developing a Golden Indonesia 2020" initiative has been reported widely

in the Indonesian media. After launching the initiative Ginanjar was named to

the board of experts of ICMI [Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia, the Associ

ation of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals]. The head of ICMI cited Ginanjar's

efforts to "develop human resources" as the reason for his selection (Repub

lika 2006b) and expressed the hope that his methods for strengthening human

resources through the intensification of Islamic practice would benefit national

development. 1'9

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOG'Y 424

Ary Ginanjar also has global ambitions. The first overseas ESQ training was

held April 7-9, 2006, in Kuala Lumpur and, in 2007, he began delivering a regularly

scheduled ESQ training in Malaysia on a bimonthly basis. Another ESQ training

program was offered to a group of Indonesian expatriates in the Netherlands from

May 12-14, 2006, in the Hague. Several more trainings have been held in the

Netherlands since. In 2007, regular trainings were introduced in Singapore and

Brunei and in 2008, ESQ was introduced to Indonesians and others in Australia

and the United States. One ESQ employee suggested that I bring ESQ to North

America given my fascination with the program. Because the training is organized

around the concept "spirituality" (which is claimed to be universal), Ary Ginanjar

and his proteges envision the possibility that ESQ might be globally successful

because it is purported to articulate a set of "universal truths" and thus, although

grounded in Islam, are not be specific to Muslims. He sees himself as one node in

the emerging global network of management knowledge constituted by programs

that offer leadership training, life coaching, and self-help for business and personal

success.

"OPENING THE GOD SPOT": MORAL CRISIS AND SPIRITUAL INTERVENTION The first component of spiritual economies involves the creation of "spiritu

ality" as an object of management, intervention, and manipulation. Ary Ginanjar

explained the rationale for ESQ by telling me, "Indonesia is now in a moment of

moral crisis, even though Indonesia is a religious country. Most Indonesians are

Muslim, so why is there a crisis even though most of them are Muslim? We found

that they separate religion from the rest of their life: their business, their economy,

their law, their life, everything. . . . So the main problem now is that the moral

crisis has become an economic crisis." In his view, the moral crisis is a result of the

fact that although most Indonesians are Muslims, their religious practice is devoid

of genuine spirituality and is thus merely pro forma. He explained to me that, "at

the moment here religion is only like a ritual.... Just a ritual without spirituality."

In response to this problem, his goal is to reinsert spirituality into religious practice

and other domains of life. 1

Spirituality was conceived of as the central object on which ESQ training

operated. However, it did not really exist for most Indonesian participants before

they encountered the training program. This object was rendered in English and

was therefore likely a term with which participants only had passing familiarity,

if that. Therefore, Ary Ginanjar had to create spirituality and ensure that it was 120

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

understood as located within an individual's body, before it could be activated and

acted on. Spirituality was invoked as something that had been lost in Indonesia's

rush to development and modernization under the authoritarian government of

Suharto. Ary Ginanjar lamented that for "too long Indonesian companies have em

phasized science and technical knowledge," but neglected spirituality. This meant

that Intellectual Quotient (IQ) was prioritized as the index of one's work capabili

ties. In contrast, Ary Ginanjar saw his mission as enhancing the spiritual knowledge

(which he terms SQ, an abbreviation for Spiritual Quotient) of Indonesians through

spiritual training. 19

This emphasis on spirituality, however, was not a rejection of science in

favor of mysticism. Rather, Ary Ginanjar saw his efforts to develop spirituality

as commensurable with the latest developments in psychology, psychiatry, and

neuroscience. When I asked Ary Ginanjar why he invoked the English word

"spiritual" as opposed to an Indonesian or Arabic term like rohani as the central

object of the training program he responded that it lent "universal" authority to

his project of spiritual reform. He said, "if I use Indonesian [in the training] they

will think that it is about religion. But if I talk in English, they will think that

it is universal. That it is science, not religion." Thus, he considered cultivating

spirituality as commensurable with scientific rationality, rather than a mystical

endeavor.

During the ESQ training, spirituality was represented as a universal human

attribute that was physically isolated in the individual bodies of every human being.20

For evidence of this Ary Ginanjar drew on the scientific research of the University of

California, San Diego neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran who "found the existence

of the God Spot in the human brain" (Ginanjar 2001:xxxix). Ramachandran's

research, which shows a certain region of the brain becoming more active during

religious activity, received widespread attention in North America (Connor 1997;

Hotz 1997). In his books and training programs, Ary Ginanjar argued that the

center of spirituality in most humans, the God Spot, is "shackled" [terbelenggu] by

preconceptions and prejudices, which leads people to behave immorally, ignore

work duties, and engage in corruption. Spirituality was further conceived of as

universal in so far as specific religious traditions were merely surface manifestations

of the same underlying global spirituality. The goal of the training is to eliminate

obstacles to "unshackle" the natural propensity for spirituality to guide action.

The mobilization of spirituality was designed to have profound effects. ESQ

training involved the introduction of a new way of conceiving of one's relationship

to oneself. A lecture in the afternoon of the second day of the training asserted that 121

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

a universal spirituality was connected to what was purported to be an innate human

propensity for making correct moral judgments. In this lecture Rinaldi depicted

two possible ways in which one could respond to the "problems and challenges" that

one faced. Two hypothetical courses of action were laid out in a neat flow chart. In

the first, a materialistic orientation [orientasi materialisme] resulted in "uncontrolled

emotions" [emosi tidak terkendali] like anger, dejection, and sadness. This resulted

in the closure of one's "spiritual conscience" [suara hati spiritual tertutup] and a

"shackling of the God Spot" [God Spot terbelenggul. This condition led to a failure in

one's ability to act logically [logika tidak bekerja normal] and an imbalance in one's

IQ, EQ, and SQ resulting in a "split personality." The second possible response

to individual and collective crises was what was termed "a spiritual orientation

toward the unity of God" [orientasi spiritualisme tauhid]. In this model of subjectivity

one s emotions were managed [emosi terkendali], so that one was calm and peaceful

leading to an open God Spot [God Spot terbuka].

Immediately following this description of possible spiritual orientations Rinaldi

lectured about the relationship between "opening the God Spot" and being a diligent

worker. As an example, he turned to a local cultural example, invoking the Sultan

of Yogyakarta's "interior servants" [abdi dalam] who he claimed worked not for

money but for the pride of working for the sultan (Woodward 1989). Rinaldi said

the contemporary crisis in Indonesia was a result of the fact that people "don't

know why they work" and that they needed to be reminded that "they work for

God." Later that day in a private conversation, Rinaldi said the goal of ESQ was to

"unshackle the God Spot." I asked him what this meant and he continued, "Every

human being is already honest, just, and accountable. But they don't always act

this way. Why? Because their God Spot is blocked! It is blocked because of all the

negative influences in the world. What they need is to return to spiritual values.

ESQ opens up the God Spot and allows the goodness that is already inside people

to come out." He continued, by explaining that knowledge of right and wrong is

already intrinsic to human beings, "conscience exists in humans. No one has to

teach them to not do corruption, because people already know that it is wrong....

These things are not taught by men, but given by God." Participants are thus

instructed that through "unshackling" their spiritual center, the "God Spot," they

can renounce degenerate pasts and become better workers, kin, and citizens.

Cultivating spirituality within subjects of spiritual reform was intended to

make participants more amenable to managerial norms, but it was also intended

to make participants more effective at self-management by transforming their 122

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

work into a matter of religious piety. Living a virtuous religious life was likened

to being a virtuous laborer and vice versa. A spiritual economy involves the

creation of spirituality as an object, represented in this case as the God Spot,

which is understood to be located within the self (Dumit 2004). Spirituality is then

activated and acted on to elicit specific dispositions in those who participate in

spiritual reform. These dispositions include the next two significant components

of spiritual economies: treating work as a form of worship and cultivating an ethics

of individual accountability.

WORSHIPPING WORK: THE QUR'AN AS HUMAN RESOURCES MANUAL A second component of spiritual economies involved reconfiguring labor as

a form of religious worship.21 Spiritual reformers in Indonesia sought to inculcate

the ethical maxim that work in the world demonstrated one's devotion to God.

According to one human resources manager, Sukrono, this intervention was the

result of an updated reading of the Qur'an. He explained:

When we were a small developing country in the 1970s we thought that

worship [ibadah] meant praying, giving alms [zakat], or going on the hajj.

That is not true, in fact, from studying the Qur'an we know that passages

dealing with these things are only about 20 percent of the content, the rest

of the Qur'an is about human relations. The crucial thing is that in everyday

activity -waking up and going to work, doing family errands, and so forth

one's intentions [niat] are toward worship.... In the hadith there is the story

of Muhammad and the stone maker. Muhammad saw two people. One was

always at the mosque, engaged in ritual. The other was working so hard,

providing for his family, that he didn't have time for ritual. Yet, it was he who

went to heaven while the former did not.

Here Sukrono illustrates how Islamic worship had been interpreted as a form of

worldly motivation. He focuses on three of the five pillars of Islam: praying, giving

alms, and going on the hajj pilgrimage. The prevailing assumptions that guided the

project of Indonesian development during the New Order had proceeded under

the assumption of a separation of religion from the economy. However, current

managers like Sukrono have recast the Qur'an as a human resources manual. In

fact, Sukrono finds evidence for what Max Weber (1946) called "inner-worldly

asceticism" in the hadith. Fulfilling one's duty to God is not restricted to following

the five pillars of Islam, or what Ary Ginanjar called mere "ritual" activity. Rather,

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2-4

following the principles that Muhammad illustrated during his life, everyday action

in the world such as working and supporting one's family constitutes religious

activity equal to performing the required practices inherent in the Five Pillars of

Islam.

Krakatau Steel employees who had participated in ESQ had similar interpre

tations about what work as worship meant. Yanto, who worked in the Krakatau

Steel credit union, connected religious practice to labor through the fact that both

involved individual discipline and attention to the clock. He said that a good Muslim

must be constantly attentive to time because of the Islamic requirement to pray five

times per day at predetermined hours. Likewise work at an industrial or clerical job

required constant attention to the clock. Yanto said, "I have to be sure to wake up

on time, be to work on time, take my breaks at the right time. . . It is the same with

prayer, it has to be done at the right time. One has to be disciplined in both religion

and work." Yanto's ideas about the relationship between time, work, and discipline

echoes Weber's characterization of this relationship as a central component of "the

spirit of capitalism" (Weber 2002:14-1 5).

Haidar, a bright young trainer, further illustrated what was at stake in wor

shipping work. I had originally met him when he was working as an instructor for

the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People training program at Krakatau Steel.

He had done a master's degree in human resources at a European university and

expressed an interest in moving to the United States to write a doctoral dissertation

on the relationship between religion and work motivation. He was deeply enthu

siastic about improving economic conditions for Indonesians and convinced that

this could be accomplished through the application of principles of management

knowledge that he had learned as a student. However, he thought that these princi

ples would be most effective when combined with the Islamic practices familiar to

most Indonesians. He had become very interested in ESQ and, several months after

I first met him, was hired by Ary Ginanjar to be an ESQ trainer. He was specifically

tasked with developing a new ESQ "product" that would focus on implementing

the principle that work was a form of worship.22

While Haidar was still working as a Seven Habits trainer, he expressed his

frustration at the lack of motivation to work hard among employees of state-owned

companies. Haidar disparaged the fact that he had heard employees joking that KS

(the acronym for Krakatau Steel by which the company was known across Indonesia)

actually stood for kerja santai or "relaxed work." He was likewise unimpressed at

how lackadaisical Krakatau Steel employees were when it came to arriving at work.

"They show no embarrassment for showing up 10, 15, 20 minutes late! And they 124

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

do it over and over! They have no shame about it!" His comments illustrate how

some human resources trainers contracted by state-owned enterprises understood

their goal as making work into a religious duty.

There are important differences, however, between the Protestant ethic de

scribed by Weber and the efforts of Indonesian spiritual reformers to make work

a form of worship. For Weber, the ethical orientation that emerged from the

revisions made by Protestant theologians was conducive to an austerely rational

ized, capitalist way of life. This relationship was contingent and unintentional. In

contrast, spiritual reformers in contemporary Indonesia make the link between

corporate success and religious piety in the present. This relationship is not contin

gent, but by design. It creates an explicit program aimed at implementing moral,

political, and economic reform simultaneously. This spiritual economy involves the

intensification of Islamic practice to enhance Islamic piety and transform economic

behavior.

Further, rather than a distant God operating at great remove from the solitary

individual, the participants in Indonesian spiritual reform are confronted by a God

who exercises meticulous surveillance through its proxies. Many participants in

ESQ related their conviction that two of Allah's angels, named Rokit and Atip,

keep a watchful eye over each individual by constantly recording deeds good and

bad. Kustowo, an employee at the billet steel plant explained that these two angels,

"maintain a database" [mencatat database] of all actions to determine whether one will

achieve salvation. Using the English words "reward" and "punishment" he said that

these two angels compile an inventory of both the sinful and meritorious actions

of each human being. The balance of these two columns determines the fate of

the deceased in the afterlife. An individual with more merits than sins would be

admitted to heaven, although a surplus of sins would consign one to the fires of hell.

"Only ourselves, God, and the two angels know about our behavior," Kustowo

told me. "If we do something halal we get a reward. If we do something haram we

get a punishment." This story was also related during the ESQ training and is one

with which many participants were clearly familiar.

These Islamic notions of accountability mirror the elements that Marilyn

Strathern has found characteristic of "audit cultures." These are protocols of finance

that are increasingly ubiquitous in a wide range of contemporary institutions and

comprise the "taken-for-granted process of neoliberal government" (Strathern

2000: 3). Spiritual reformers thus draw on a common concept in Islamic eschatology

and transform accountability at work into a matter of religious worship. The report

compiled by the two angels is filed away for Judgment Day and a final decision 125

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CULTUML ANTHROPOLOGY 24: i

on one s salvation. I draw on Strathern's argument to show how popular Islamic

beliefs about audits converge with neoliberal norms of audit and accountability

in constituting a component of a spiritual economy. Treating work as a form of

worship involves cultivating an ethics of individual accountability and illuminates

the convergence of Islam and neoliberalism.

"DEVELOP YOUR BUILT-IN CONTROL": CORRUPTION, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND SPIRITUAL REFORM

The third component of spiritual economies entails the inculcation of ethics

of individual accountability that are commensurable with neoliberal norms of

transparency and efficiency. ESQ was designed as means not just to develop an

Islamic work ethic, but also as a means to eliminate rampant corruption at Krakatau

Steel. Proponents believed that the initiative would transform what one employee

described as a "culture of corruption" at the company. As described above, since its

inception Krakatau Steel was widely conceived of as a vehicle for social rather than

strictly economic development. State technocrats sought to elevate living standards

for educated Indonesians by creating middle-class livelihoods through well-paid

salaried jobs. However, this system did not promote either individual accountability

or entrepreneurial behavior. Lisa Rofel documents a similar tension between

the collectivism of the Cultural Revolution and the individualizing techniques

implemented during economic reforms in post-Mao China (1 999). In Indonesia, this

tension was exacerbated by the fact that social development created opportunities

in which managers were able to engage in corrupt practices for individual benefit.

Corruption has long been a concern in Southeast Asia (Jackson and Pye

1978; Sutherland 1979), but although countries like Singapore have taken dramatic

steps to increase "transparency" in their governments, in Indonesia corruption is

viewed as a persistent problem by both Indonesians and transnational organizations

(Schrauwers 2003). Many Indonesians are deeply suspicious of elites and assume

they use their positions to their personal advantage (Butt 2005). A discourse about

corruption, circulated by transnational institutions has had far-reaching effects on

the way in which Indonesians see themselves and their place in the world. Mul

tilateral institutions have stated that "Indonesia remains the most corrupt country

in East Asia" (World Bank 2003). Often overlooked in these appraisals is the fact

that activities classified as corrupt may in fact draw on patron-client relations that

have a different social logic (Scott and Kerkvliet 1977). In such arrangements rights

and responsibilities are not premised on the actions of "liberal subjects," the au

tonomous and rationally maximizing individuals of the west (Mehta 1999; Povinelli 126

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

2002). Nevertheless, discourses that represent corruption as a problem and the

attendant practices intended to "fight corruption" are expected to rationalize eco

nomic behavior. The national media widely covers reports on corruption composed

by transnational institutions. These accounts are a regular topic of conversation

among Indonesians.

State-owned companies have been long regarded as sites of some of the most

egregious corruption. This was because in part of the fact that they could depend on

consistent infusions of cash from the central government under import substitution

industrialization policies premised on prerogatives of national modernization and

development (Heryanto 1988; Hill 2000). Suharto's Golkar party used state

owned enterprises to distribute patronage during the New Order. Systems of

audit and accounting existed within the administrative structure, but were not

enforced. For example, when I interviewed Kadiono, an employee of Krakatau

Steel's internal audit department, he told me that members of his department had

trouble confronting those suspected of corruption, particularly in cases where the

accused were long-time acquaintances of those tasked with carrying out audits.

Krakatau Steel employees and outside observers (such as journalists, aca

demics, and NGO activists) thought the company was rife with rampant corrup

tion. Employees routinely regaled me with stories about people at all levels of

the company who were complicit with, if not direct participants in, activities that

were branded "corrupt" [korupsi]. At lower levels of the company hierarchy these

were small scale. For example, employees reported that company security guards

regularly accepted bribes from thieves removing stolen materials from factory

grounds. One common practice was what employees referred to as "time corrup

tion" [korupsi waktu], which involved an employee leaving work early but giving his

or her company-issued identity badge to a colleague so that the offender would

be clocked out at the apportioned time, thus receiving full wages and evading

disciplinary action.

At higher levels of the company hierarchy there were more serious incidents

of collusion typically involving arrangements in which kickbacks were provided

on purchases. Employees at the level of division head or manager had the ability

to approve contracts that were negotiated with outside parties. It was common

practice to take a kickback, or what was referred to as "commission" [komisil on

these external contracts. These contracts involved anything the company regularly

purchased including oil, computers for an office, or spare parts for the giant

machines that melt, cast, and roll raw steel. Hadi, an operator in the hot strip mill

illustrated some examples of collusion and corruption in his plant, telling me that _ 127

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 214:f

suppliers "were supposed to send first-class products [spek kelas satu], but what was

received was fourth class. The first-class materials will last for several months, but

the fourth class maybe only two weeks. . . . A piece of equipment that actually cost

only 140,000 rupiah would be sold to the company for 14 million!"23 As long as the

company could count on steady infusions of state development funds, such drains

on company accounts could be willfully ignored. Given increasing international

competition because of the deregulation of the formerly nationalized steel market,

however, such demands on finances were becoming a serious problem for the

company's bottom line.

Proponents of spiritual reform sought to inculcate an ethic of self-management,

which they termed "built-in control" to eliminate corruption and make the company

more attractive to outside investment. One senior manager at Krakatau Steel,

Djohan, who had attended several years of graduate school in the United States

connected the practices of spiritual reform to new economic norms. He gave a

personal account of his spiritual awakening and its effect on his attitude toward his

job. In somewhat stiff English he poignantly confided:

ESQ helped me communicate with God. Sometimes, when my feelings are

very clean, when I pray, I cry. ... You can manage your heart through

the methods of ESQ. ... When someone asks for bribe, if they have already

managed their heart well, their heart will urge them "please don't do that!". . .

That is built-in control. If you can manage your heart well, you can develop

your built-in control [then] the employees don't do corruption. Not because

they are afraid of their superiors, not because they are afraid of their leaders,

not because they are afraid of regulations that will have them sent to jail.

But I am afraid. Why? Because I have already seen how someone who does

corruption is tortured in hell!24

Djohan illustrates a spiritual economy by asserting that enhanced Islamic piety

is a method of inculcating an ethic of personal responsibility (Rose 1999). Central to

achieving this disposition is remembering one's individual accountability to God. In

this instance, Djohan shows how a bodily activity, shedding tears, is a physical sign

of atonement that represents the subjective transformation of a working subject.

This link between labor, individual accountability, and religious piety is constitutive

of a spiritual economy. At stake in this assemblage is the political, economic, and

spiritual reform of a business perceived to be threatened by chronic corruption.

This focus on individual accountability and self-management through Islam

has further significance. During the Suharto era the state's monopoly on coercive 128

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

violence and occasional willingness to use it produced a brutally effective check on

collective political action by workers. Furthermore, rumor, fear, and state violence

shrouded in secrecy were a central means through which the New Order state was

able to hold on to power in Indonesia for 32 years (Siegel 1998, 2006). The end of

the Suharto regime and increasing international pressure on the Indonesian military

to observe human rights conventions meant that the state no longer acted with such

impunity. Hence Djohan's emphasized the importance of developing methods of

"built-in control." Given the reduced repressive capacity of the Indonesian state and

the precarious position of Krakatau Steel, which must compete in an increasingly

globalized steel market, managers like Djohan see self-management and individual

accountability as values that are indispensable to the survival of the company.

CONCLUSION: FROM FAITH IN DEVELOPMENT TO DEVELOPING FAITH

The concept of spiritual economies captures how religion and neoliberalism

can combine to enlist subjects in their own self-government. By making spirituality

a site of economic intervention and action, subjects are inculcated with norms

conducive to what architects of this spiritual economy refer to as "built-in con

trol." By interpreting work as a form of worship, subjects of spiritual reform are

informed that their everyday work can enable them to ensure otherworldly salva

tion. Religious practice is reconfigured according to norms of maximum economy

in so far as principles such as transparency, productivity, and rationalization are

represented as ethics already inherent in Islam. Spiritual economies further illu

minate how individual audits enable the assemblage of religion and neoliberalism.

These constant detailed reflections on individual practice to ensure compliance

with abstract economic and religious norms are central to ethical practice in both

domains.

Conceptualization of spiritual economies provides analytical purchase on the

convergence of religious reform and capitalist transformation in many parts of

the world today, shedding light on enduring affinities between certain religious

practices and what Weber termed "the spirit of capitalism." Central to achieving

this affinity is turning spirituality into a site of individual management, redefin

ing work as a form of spiritual practice, and instilling ethics of individual ac

countability and personal responsibility for this worldly success and other worldly

salvation.

Spiritual economies are distinct from the prosperity religions that have recently

proliferated in Southeast Asia and beyond (Coleman 2000; Jackson 1999; Wiegele

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:1

2005). Prosperity religions are premised on the notion that enhanced religious

devotion will foster economic prosperity through divine intervention. Spiritual

economies, in contrast, entail inculcating the ethical dispositions deemed conducive

to market success. Rather than expecting divine intervention, spiritual economies

are premised on inculcating ethics of work as worship, self-discipline, responsibility,

and accountability to achieve worldly affluence and otherworldly salvation.

I also elaborated the analytic of spiritual economies to illuminate a new

facet of Indonesian modernization. Under both Suharto and Sukarno, development

was seen as a technological problem (Barker 2005). B. J. Habibie, Suharto's

influential Minister of Research and Technology and Vice-President who later

became President of Indonesia, envisioned that the country would use technological

innovations from Europe and North America to "leap frog" stages of development

and bring Western standards of living to Indonesia. However, Indonesia's economic

and political crises called this optimistic program into question. Ary Ginanjar and

his proteges architects of the spiritual economy described here concluded that

the nation's ills were the effect of moral flaws. ESQ, their program of "spiritual

reform," addressed this failure by enhancing a form of Islamic practice that contains

ethical dispositions conducive to neoliberalism.

The combination of Islamic ethics and business management and life-coaching

practices has produced new ways of governing selves, families, and the nation at

large. Thus, proponents of ESQ see the program in opposition to recent calls for

the implementation of syariah law in Indonesia. They see such calls as a demand for

"more rules" whereas ESQ offers the possibility of eliminating ills like corruption

through more effective self-government. Further, by finding precedent for business

management knowledge in Qur'anic injunctions and events in the history of Islam,

spiritual reformers seek to demonstrate that devout Islamic practice is conducive

to worldly success.

Programs of spiritual reform in contemporary Indonesia are moderate in so far

as they do not advocate rejection of the west. Spiritual reformers like Ary Ginanjar

emphasize a universal humanity that is premised on the fact that all humans contain

a "God Spot." Thus, they do not see Islam as locked in an inevitable conflict with

the west. As one Krakatau Steel manager and ESQ advocate remarked, "We have

a saying, Americans are not Muslim, but there are Islam-like" (bukan Islam, tapi

Islami). By this he meant that, like Muslims, Americans "keep their commitments

and are attentive to time and cleanliness." Developing Islamic practice was not a

stance against the West, but a way of enhancing the transnational competitiveness

of Indonesian workers. 130

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

In contemporary Indonesia, the economy is increasingly defined in transna

tional rather than domestic terms, in so far as state-owned companies can no longer

depend on protective tariffs and government subsidies. The intensification of Is

lamic practice is represented as a means to address these challenges, as it offers

the possibility of increasing the productivity and competitiveness of Indonesian

workers. At the time of publication, the massive job loss that many feared would

follow withdrawal of subsidies had not transpired. Perhaps not coincidentally, by

August 2008 global steel prices had reached all time highs (Milnes 2008). The global

surge in prices for industrial metals had buoyed Krakatau Steel's bottom line and

appeared to stave off the threat of job cuts for the time being. However, Indonesian

government officials and company managers still see privatization as the key to

future viability. In September 2008, the national parliament finally consented to

the sale of a 30 percent stake in Krakatau Steel through an initial public offering

(Suharmoko 2008).

Ultimately, the success of ESQ in Indonesia stemmed from the fact that it

could be represented as simultaneously universal and particular. Thus, those who

took part in the program could be confident in their own religious values and

practices. But they could also be made receptive to the argument that Islam was

a manifestation of underlying universal values. This flexibility of form is part of

what makes it neoliberal. At the same time that Ary Ginanjar promoted ESQ as

grounded in the five pillars of Islam and the six pillars of iman (faith), he also

asserted that it was universal because it was grounded in scientific knowledge. He

envisioned spiritual reform as a remedy to Indonesia's crisis of development, but

also worked actively to introduce it to non-Muslims both within the country and

overseas. He drew inspiration for the training from Islam, but argued that Islam

was an outward manifestation of an underlying general spirituality. Ary Ginanjar

and other proponents of ESQ stressed either the program's universality or its

particularity with different audiences at different times. This flexibility enabled the

program's popularity and spectacular growth.

The creation of a spiritual economy in Indonesia is neither a wholesale transla

tion of Weber's spirit of capitalism, nor is it a strict interpretation of Islamic texts

and practices. It is an unprecedented assemblage that is as much the Islamization of

neoliberalism as it is the neoliberalization of Islam. Indonesia's earlier Suharto-era

push to modernization through supporting primary industries like steel production

was characterized by an unbending faith in development. Recent efforts to enlist

the nation's workers in a spiritual economy demonstrate that today faith itself is

being recast as development in a more flexible neoliberal landscape. 131

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CULTUMRAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

ABSTRACT This essay argues that the convergence of religious ethics and business management

knowledge illustrate theformation 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 aform of religious worship, and inculcating an ethic of individual account

ability 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 contempo

rary 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 west

ern management knowledge that is expected to enhance economic productivity, reduce

endemic corruption, and prepare employees of state-owned enterprisesfor privatization.

Keywords: neoliberalism, Islam, spiritual economies, Indonesia, globalization, management, ethics

NOTES Acknowledgments. I extend my most sincere gratitude to Daenulhay, President Director of

PT Krakatau Steel and all the other employees of the company who not only enabled me to do research at the company, but tolerated all the questions I asked them. I regret that to protect their confidentiality, I am not able to thank them individually. I offer my deepest thanks to Ary Ginanjar, Rinaldi Agusyana, and the rest of their staff from the ESQ Leadership Center for kindly and patiently addressing my entreaties. I am grateful for constructive criticism and insightful comments on this essay provided by Suraya Afif, Carlo Bonura, Joseph Bryan, Leslie Butt, Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Benjamin Gardiner, Laura Hubbard, Kevin Karpiak, Celia Lowe, Aihwa Ong, Christopher Morgan, Nancy Peluso, Analiese Richard, Mary Steedly, and Jerome Whitington. I also received exceptionally useful comments from three anonymous CA reviewers. Versions of this essay were presented at UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, Colorado University, the University of Puget Sound, the University of Victoria, the University of Washington, and the meetings of the Association of Asian Studies. I am grateful for the critical feedback I received from the participants in those forums. This research

was made possible with material support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the International Dissertation Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council, the University of California's Pacific Rim Research Program, and Fulbright-Hays. Any outstanding flaws in this essay are wholly my own.

1. The talqin ritual is well documented in accounts of Islamic practice in Indonesia. Geertz provides an account of the talqin delivered in eastern Java (Geertz 1960:71) and Bowen describes a similar ceremony in the Gayo region of Aceh (Bowen 1984:24?25). How ever, the accounts offered by both Geertz and Bowen occur after someone had actually passed away, whereas in the scene described here the talqin was invoked as a role play in which participants simulated the experience to prepare for their own eventual experience of death.

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

2. In referring to this object as an assemblage I draw on the work of Collier and Ong who describe

an assemblage as "the product of multiple determinations that are not reducible to a single logic. ... It does not always involve new forms, but forms that are shifting, in formation, or at stake ... [It is] heterogeneous, contingent, unstable, partial, and situated" (Collier and Ong 2005:12).

3. Two anthropologists of Southeast Asia have used the phrase "spiritual economies" in passing (Brenner 1998:171; Klima 2002:153, 282-286). Although related, my development of the concept differs in important ways. For example, Brenner uses the term to refer to the way in which many Javanese believe that through mastering "desires they can accumulate both

material wealth and spiritual merit" (Brenner 1998:171 ). My use of spiritual economies refers

to the way in which spirituality is produced as an object of self-management and intervention to facilitate new economic practices. Thus, my focus is not on the economic benefit of accumulating spiritual merit, but rather on inculcating spirituality to produce new types of laboring subjects.

4. Most Krakatau Steel employees were supportive of the ESQ initiative, although I did encounter a small number who were critical, referring to it as "propaganda." Due to space limitations these criticisms are not dealt with in detail here.

5. Maghrib is the first evening prayer for Muslims and occurs at sundown. It is a particularly important prayer for employees of Krakatau Steel because it represents the end of the workday for nonshift employees. Departing work for home before maghrib sometimes served as a justification for leaving work early.

6. The sa'i ritual consists of running or rapidly walking seven times back and forth between the hills of Safa and Marwah in Mecca. This is a reenactment of Hagar's anxious search for water before Allah revealed the waters of the Zamzam spring to her.

7. The stoning of jamrat al-aqabah takes place in Mina just outside of Mecca and represents rebuking the devil. This requires collecting a number of pebbles from the ground on the plain of Muzdalifah and hurling the pebbles at the three pillars at Mina, which represent the devil.

All three pillars represent the devil: the first and largest is where he tempted Abraham against sacrificing Ishmael, the second is where he tempted Abraham's wife Hagar to stop him, and the third is where he tempted Ishmael to avoid being sacrificed. He was rebuked each time, and the throwing of the stones symbolizes those rejections.

8. This style of oration was not foreign, as Christian televangelists appeared on weekend religious shows on some Indonesian television networks during the period in which fieldwork for this project took place.

9. Republika is affiliated with the ICMI, the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (for more on ICMI see Hefner 2000:128?166). Beginning in 2005, the newspaper devoted one page each week solely to articles about ESQ. This was published in conjunction with the ESQ Leadership Center.

10. As of early 2008, the three Indonesian provinces with no ESQ presence were Gorontalo, Maluku Utara, and Nusa Tenggara Timur. These are among the poorest and least developed provinces in Indonesia.

11. A number of charismatic figures have emerged across the Muslim world who seek to merge Islam and capitalism. From the charismatic Egyptian television preacher Amr Khaled (Wise 2003) to the Turkish Sufi Fethullah Guien, who preaches that wealth, industry, and en trepreneurship are facets of being a good Muslim (Aras and Caha 2000).

12. Aa Gym's star has dimmed somewhat after his decision to marry a second wife in December 2006 (Hoesterey 2007).

13. Geertz's notion of "shared poverty" was widely criticized by subsequent scholars for his inattention to widespread hierarchy and stratification in rural areas (Hart 1986; White 1983).

14. With the exception of recognizable public figures, I have used pseudonyms to conceal the identities of all individuals referred to directly in this essay. A guarantee of anonymity was a

condition of many of the conversations that I had during my research. 15. The New Order refers to the period in Indonesia's history that coincides with Suharto's tenure

as national leader, roughly the years 1965 through 1998. Suharto coined the term to contrast the period of his rule with the "Old Order" under Sukarno. Suharto sought to stabilize the _

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:.

Indonesian economy, which suffered from rampant inflation and low productivity prior to his administration.

16. "Commission" [komisi] was a widely deployed euphemism for illegitimate kickbacks on contracts signed by managers. This is discussed in greater detail below.

17. The hadith are collections of writings that relate the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.

18. Although Ary Ginanjar suggests that Islamic spiritual reform movements like ESQ and others represent a rupture with the past, in fact these movements are in many ways a continuation

of processes that began in the latter years of the New Order. As Robert Hefner has shown, Suharto sought the "greening" or Islamization of the Indonesian bureaucracy as he shifted his dependence from the military to Islamic groups to shore up support for his regime (Hefner 2000). In 1990 Suharto founded ICMI (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia), the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals, as a means of cultivating support among the growing legions of middle-class Muslims in Indonesia. In the following year, in another

move to consolidate the support of Muslims, he completed the hajj pilgrimage and adopted the name Haji Mohammed Suharto. Thus, far from springing wholesale from the rubble of the New Order, in many ways Islamic spiritual reform movements in contemporary Indonesia

can be seen as a continuation of processes underway during the latter years of the New Order. Thanks to an anonymous CA reviewer for helping me to clarify this point.

19. Ary Ginanjar is well versed in popular social science and the concepts he uses are derived from

the work of North American and European management trainers and life-coaching gurus. He cites the research of Danah Zohar and Daniel Goleman, whose academic affiliation with

Harvard University lends them global credibility. Zohar, who advanced to Ph.D. candidacy in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, is influential for her work in identifying the spiritual quotient (SQ) (Zohar and Marshall 2000) and Goleman, who received a Ph.D. from the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, is credited with discovering emotional quotient (EQ) (Goleman 1995). Ary Ginanjar represents both of these inventions as landmark scientific

achievements. On the first morning of ESQ training the concepts of IQ, EQ, and SQ are introduced as important events in a progressive account of the history of scientific discovery. Subsequently, landmark achievements in the history of astronomy and astrophysics are later recounted, such as Copernicus's theory of a heliocentric solar system and the proof of an expanding universe confirmed by observations using the Hubble telescope.

20. Paul Rabinow has observed that, like in ESQ training, the spiritual is simultaneously particular and general in contemporary France. Contemporary debates over whether genetic material is isomorphic with national boundaries reflect the way in which "the spiritual lives in the person,

[but also] forms the 'general part' of the particular" (Rabinow 1999:11). 21. This section builds on Rudnyckyj 2008. 22. This "second stage product" was called "Mission Statement" and was completed in early 2007,

with the first paid trainings held in March and April ofthat year.

23. In 2004, this was worth roughly $ 15 and $ 1,500, respectively. 24. Djohan used the acronym "KKN," which stands for korupsi, kolusi, dan n?potisme [corruption,

collusion, and nepotism]. This acronym is commonly used to refer to a bribe and this is how I have translated it here.

Editor's Note: Cultural Anthropology has published a number of other essays on neoliberalism

and subjectivity. See, for example, Aradhana Sharma's "Crossbreeding Institutions, Breeding Struggle: Women's Empowerment, Neoliberal Governmentality, and State (Re)Formation in India" (2006); Nickola Pazderic's "Recovering True Selves in the Electro-Spiritual Field of

Universal Love" (2004); and Yan Hairong's "Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism: Organizing Suzhi/Value Flow through Labor Recruitment Networks" (2003). Cultural Anthropology has also published a range of articles on globalization. See Ritty Lukose's "Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization" (2005); Karen Ho's "Situating Global Capitalisms: A View from Wall Street Investment Banks" (2005); and Victoria Bernai's "Eritrea Goes Global: Reflections on Nationalism in a Transnational Era"

(2004). 134

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SPIRITUAL ECONOMIES

Cultural Anthropology has also published additional essays on Indonesia. See, for example, Tom Boellstorff's "Playing Back the Nation: Waria, Indonesian Transvestites" (2004); Celia Lowe's "Making the Monkey: How the Togean Macaque Went from 'New Form' to 'Endemic Species' in Indonesians' Conservation Biology" (2004); and Webb Keane's "Knowing One's Place: National Language and the Idea of the Local in Eastern Indonesia" (1997).

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