Incorporating Spirituality and Market: Islamic Sharia Business and Religious Life in Post-New Order Indonesia
Abstract: This article
examines the religious transformation of the Muslim middle class and itsrelationship
with the growing sharia market in post-New Order Indonesia. It argues that in
the Indonesian neo-liberal era, this spiritual revival considerably influenced
the economic realm. The transformation of piety of the Indonesian middle class
marked the emergence of new potential economic markets. It was responded to
enthusiasticallyby markets producing selective products with a spiritual
content. In its process, therole of spiritual lifestyle agents played a pivotal
role in helping and shaping the new urban middle class who consume Islam to
mark their Islamic identity. It was then that the energetic blending between
Islamic piety and capitalism occurred in contemporaryIndonesia. Islamic symbolic
consumption becomes a new source of spiritualism as wellas a source of
religious identification. However, this article argues that this process tendsto
oversimplify Islam as a ‘material process’ rather than a ‘spiritual process’.
PENULIS: W i l d a n S e n a U
t a m a
Kode Jurnal: jpsosiologidd150719
