research
 Advert in KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  "Work is Worship," Krakatau Steel, Indonesia  Billet Steel Plant, Krakatau Steel, Indonesia |
My
research focuses on globalization, religion, development, Islam,
modernity, and the state in Southeast Asia and the Middle East,
primarily Indonesia and Malaysia. Supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC),
the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological
Research, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and Fulbright-Hays among other funding agencies, my work
straddles the boundaries of political economy and the anthropology of
religion. The central problem I have pursued in my research is a
critical examination of the implications of making economic calculation
a universal norm and moral standard for the organization and government
of human life. I am pursuing this line of inquiry in the research projects detailed below. Abstracts of some of my publications can be found at http://uvic.academia.edu/DaromirRudnyckyj/Papers Research projects In 2010 I started
research on the globalization of Islamic finance, focusing primarily on
Malaysia and Bahrain. This project asks whether Islamic finance
offers an alternative to global fiscal networks centered in New York,
London, and Tokyo or whether it is a translation of conventional
financial instruments into Arabic terms and Muslim practices. Bahrain
and Malaysia are the leading sites for the development of a
transnationally-integrated system of Islamic finance but have fallen
outside the scope of previous anthropological work on this topic.
Political and business leaders in each city seek to position Manama and
Kuala Lumpur respectively as the “New York of the Muslim world”: the
central node in a transnational financial system grounded in Islamic
principles. They are developing an elaborate financial infrastructure
that conforms to shariah principles to achieve this goal. This
ethnographic study of the everyday practices of creating a
transnational Islamic financial infrastructure offers the possibility
of an alternative conceptualization of globalization, insofar as it
focuses on a global network in which traditional centers in Europe, the
United States, and East Asia play a relatively minor role.
Spiritual Economies: Islam and the Afterlife of Development This project
analyzes a socio-technical scheme for developing faith in contemporary
Southeast Asia. I analyze how Islam is mobilized to facilitate the
neoliberal reform of state-owned enterprises planned for privatization.
Based on more than two years of ethnographic research, most of which
took place at state-owned Krakatau Steel in western Java, I examine how
what is referred to as “spiritual reform” is designed to address the
challenge posed by the end of faith in development (the utopian
aspirations inherent in modernization and industrialization). I analyze
how efforts to merge Islam with the ethics of globalization create what
I term the “afterlife of development”: the assemblage of a modernist
commitment to rationality and domains, like religious practice, that
previously lay outside the logic of modernization and development.
An interactive, hypertext essay on this project is available at: A blog post on this project can be found at: Gift or Graft?: Anti-Corruption in Indonesia I have recently
initiated a project on the emergence of corruption as an object of
intervention in Indonesia and the effects of state and para-state
efforts to diagnose and prevent corruption. I seek to develop a more
comprehensive understanding of the category corruption and its effects
by asking what forms of economic rationality are produced through
denoting certain practices corrupt. This project focuses not so much on
determining the causes of corruption, but rather on how corruption is
represented and acted upon as a problem that is simultaneously moral
and economic. At stake in this transformation is a radical redefinition
of what constitutes a moral economy, as the rationality of gift
exchange is called into question in efforts to conform to prevailing
global norms.
The Everyday Life of Modernity: Forging the Nation in an Indonesian Steel Town This ongoing
ethnographic project documents the worldviews of a generation of
engineers and other skilled workers who worked at Krakatau Steel, a
massive state-owned company in western Java and the largest steel
factory in Southeast Asia. In describing the lives of workers who
produced steel, the signature material symbol of modernity, I show how
their hopes and aspirations were connected to a broader set of
assumptions about development, progress, and the conduct of modern life.
Recent research
presentations (selected) “Methods for an Anthropology of Modernity: A Book Discussion,” Institut d’Ethnologie Méditerranéenne, Européenne et Comparative (IDEMEC), Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, November 2011. “Spirits and Citizens: The Politics of Religious Difference in Indonesia,” invited paper for the UCLA Indonesian Studies Program workshop "Indonesian Subjectivities in the Post-Suharto Era." May 2010. “Engineering Islam: From Faith in Development to Developing Faith in Indonesia,” invited lecture, KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, University of Leiden, Netherlands. November 2009. “Reconfiguring Muslim Politics: Popularizing Islam in Indonesia,” invited paper for the SSRC-ASSR conference "Popularizing Islam, Recasting the Political" at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. November 2009. “Practicing Globalization: Islam and the Afterlife of Development,” invited lecture, Department of Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. September 2009. “Engineering Islam: From Faith in Development to Developing Faith in Contemporary Indonesia,” invited lecture, Department of Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden. August 2009. “Spirits and Citizens: The Politics of Religious Difference in Indonesia,” invited lecture, Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University. April 2009. “Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia,” Center for Southeast Asia Studies, invited lecture, University of Washington. April 2008. “Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia,” invited lecture, Critical Introductions to Islam and Muslim Politics Lecture Series, University of Puget Sound. April 2008. “Islamic Ethics and the Spirits of Neoliberalism: Spiritual Reform in Contemporary Indonesia,” invited lecture, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside. March 2006. “Worshipping Work: Spiritual Reform in Post-Developmental Indonesia,” invited lecture, Center for Asian Studies, Colorado University, Boulder. February 2006. |