RECONSIDERING MODELS OF ISLAMIC SUB-ECONOMY IN URBAN INDONESIA: DEVELOPMENTAL ETHICS OR NEOLIBERAL LOGIC?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32332/akademika.v31i1.12811Keywords:
Islamic sub-economy, institutional hybridization, market-oriented governance;, ethical commodification;, urban IndonesiaAbstract
The study of the Islamic sub-economy in Indonesian cities typically links its expansion to middle-class ethical consumption and development-oriented religiosity. This article challenges that assumption by examining how Islamic moral norms translate into administrative standards, organizational procedures, and market instruments. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of multi-level regulatory and institutional documents on halal governance in Indonesia, the study investigates the institutionalization of halal values within urban economic spaces. Findings indicate that this institutionalization is driven less by consumer demand than by regulatory infrastructures that standardize, certify, and operationalize moral norms across economic sectors. Rather than acting as primary drivers, the urban Muslim middle class appears as a social group that receives, reproduces, and amplifies already-established norms. Based on these findings, the article offers a conceptual model of institutional hybridization: the four-layer hybridization model of the urban Islamic economy—comprising hybrid governance, organizational forms, urban spaces, and subjectivity. This model identifies a sequential mechanism of institutional transformation overlooked in previous studies. Religious values are thus understood not merely as organic ethical expressions but as products of institutional processes that simultaneously standardize, operationalize, and commodify morality within market-oriented governance arrangements. Documentary evidence further suggests the emergence of market-oriented governance rationalities, in which the language of ethical development serves as a source of institutional legitimacy. This study contributes to debates in Islamic political economy by shifting analytical focus from individual ethical consumption toward the regulatory infrastructures through which religious values are standardized, commodified, and circulated in contemporary urban Indonesia.
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