Abstract
This dissertation is a comparative study of moral education and
ethical subject formation in two nationally renowned Islamic
boarding schools for girls in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Building on
twenty-one months of ethnographic field research (2011-2013), the
dissertation examines how young Muslim women learn and engage with
what it means to be pious, educated, and modern. The two schools
were selected for their national prominence and educational
leadership within the respective mass social welfare organizations
of which they are a part: the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (35
million members) and the modernist Muhammadiyah (25 million
members). Achieving Islam analyzes the role of "reflective
freedom" (Laidlaw 2014)--the ability of actors to stand apart from
their actions and turn them into objects of evaluative thought--in
the ethical training of young Muslim women at these two schools. As
such, this dissertation analyzes the process of religious subject
formation not by privileging the perspective of the institutions,
administrators, and teachers, but by examining what Jarrett Zigon
has called the "fragmented moral world" (2009) in which girls live.
It argues that even in a protective, ethically-focused institution
like an Islamic boarding school, issues of morality and ethical
training do not exist in a vacuum. Instead, they contend with other
concerns in girls' lives--from romance to consumption, popular
culture to self-presentation. Research methods included
observations of classrooms and extracurricular activities as well
as dormitories, leisure outings off school grounds, and home visits
with families. Semi-structured interviews and life histories were
conducted with students, parents, teachers, and administrators;
methods also included a multivariate survey of students'
socio-economic and educational backgrounds and their career and
family aspirations. This study's ethnographic findings demonstrate
how the personal and social determination of what the psychiatric
anthropologist Arthur Kleinman (2006) has described as "what really
matters" - that is, ethical concerns central to one's
self-understanding and social aspirations - involves a subtle
interaction between school practices, social networks, and the
biographies and personalities actors bring to their educational and
public socialization. It is this interaction that this research
analyzes, in an effort to contribute a more variegated
understanding of Islamic education, ethics, and subjectivity.
Table of Contents
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About this Dissertation
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