Hefner Explores Impact of Television on Indonesian Islamic Resurgence
On July 19, 2022, Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Director of the School’s Center for the Study of Asia, took part in a book launch discussion on Inaya Rakhmani’s Mainstreaming Islam in Indonesia: Television, Identity, and the Middle Class. The event was organized by the Asia Research Center at the University of Indonesia.
In his remarks, Hefner states that a far-reaching Islamic resurgence has occurred over the past 24 years, coincident with Indonesia’s return to electoral democracy. An often overlooked feature of that resurgence, he argues, has been the role played by television media – especially Islamic soap operas and religious programming – in conveying new ideas and practices of piety. There’s been a massive increase in Islamic programming over the past twenty years, and the piety featured in such programming is moralistic and largely apolitical. But it has had a huge impact on popular understandings and practices of piety in matters like women’s dress and everyday social styles. Hefner concluded that this type of programming has also helped to align the consumer habits of Indonesia’s growing middle class with new forms of “halal consumerism.”
Mainstreaming Islam in Indonesia considers the question of Islam and commercialization in Indonesia, a majority Muslim, non-Arab country. Revealing the cultural heterogeneity behind rising Islamism in a democratizing society, it highlights the case of television production and the identity of its viewers. Drawing from detailed case studies from across islands in the diverse archipelagic country, it contends that commercial television has democratized the relationship between Islamic authority and the Muslim congregation, and investigates the responses of the heterogeneous middle class towards commercial da’wah.
A video recording of the book launch will be available on the Asia Research Center’s website once processed. For more information on Mainstreaming Islam in Indonesia, visit SpringerLink’s website.
Robert Hefner has directed 19 research projects and organized 18 international conferences, and authored or edited nineteen books. He is the former president of the Association for Asian Studies. At CURA, he directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in two research projects: “The New Western Plurality and Civic Coexistence: Muslims, Catholics, and Secularists in North America and Western Europe”; and “Sharia Transitions: Islamic Law and Ethical Plurality in the Contemporary World.” Read more about Professor Hefner on his faculty profile.