Globalization as practice: Islam and the afterlife of development in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This paper analyzes a socio-technical scheme for popularizing Islam in across Southeast Asia and seeks to better understand how Islam creates interdependent relations across borders in Southeast Asia and beyond. The paper describes how Islam is being mobilized to facilitate the neoliberal reform of state-owned enterprises planned for privatization in Indonesia. Based on 18 months of ethnographic research, most of which took place at state-owned Krakatau Steel, I show how what is called "spiritual reform" is mobilized to address the crisis posed by the end of faith in development. Faith in development refers to state-directed development and the post-colonial project of nationalist modernization and industrialization. The paper describes how spiritual reformers interpret the Qur'an, Islamic history, and Muslim religious practices to make Islam compatible with principles for corporate success found in human resources management texts, self-help manuals, and life-coaching sessions. The paper will describe the spread of these programs from Indonesia to Malaysia. Singapore, and Brunei. In these elaborately narrated and vividly illustrated training programs the prophet Muhammad is represented as an "ideal CEO" and the five pillars of Islam are reinterpreted as directives for business success. I conclude that this assemblage of the twilight of nationalist development, religious resurgence, and transnational economic integration provides insight into an alternative means analyze globalization and better understand interdependent relations in Southeast Asia. Whereas most social scientists treat globalization as either a space, an era, a culture, or a system, this new approach focuses the actual practices of globalization.