Book Reviews of Spiritual Economies: Islam, Globalizaton and the Afterlife of Development

Spiritual Economies has been reviewed in the following journals:

• American Ethnologist

• Anthropology of Work Review

• Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde

• British Journal of Industrial Relations
  

• Bustan: The Middle East Book Review

• Contemporary Southeast Asia

• Ethnos
  

• Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

• Political and Legal Anthropology Review
  

Description
In Europe and North America Muslims are often represented in conflict with modernity—but what could be more modern than motivational programs that represent Islamic practice as conducive to business success and personal growth? Daromir Rudnyckyj's innovative and surprising book challenges widespread assumptions about contemporary Islam by showing how moderate Muslims in Southeast Asia are reinterpreting Islam not to reject modernity but to create a "spiritual economy" consisting of practices conducive to globalization.

Endorsements
"In anthropology, the value of inspiring ideas in any period depends on their realization in convincing ethnographic achievements. In this regard, Spiritual Economies is a bravura performance: at the site of Krakatau Steel, it shows the power and kinship of experiments in neoliberal economy, religious revival, ethnography—and para-ethnography—all in the same frame."

“In the clearly written and strongly argued Spiritual Economies, Daromir Rudnyckyj brings together the anthropology of development and globalization and the anthropology of the rising Islamic piety movement to show that religious resurgence can be part of globalizing economic development, not necessarily a refuge from it. He traces many of Indonesia’s recent political and religious transformations from the vantage point of a steel factory, where the ESQ spiritual training program combines spiritual guidance, business success training, and a vision of Islam as predictive and encompassing of science and technology.”