Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program and Dean of the College Present

Fun and Freedom: Gendered Agency in Indonesian Islamic Boarding Schools

This presentation analyzes the role of fun and freedom in the moral learning of young women students in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Recent debates about Islam and ethical subject formation have centered on the assumed tension between Islam and freedom. Moments of fun and leisure often theorized as challenging or at the margins of religious life. I examine decisions about television viewing and dress to illustrate both the flexibility and fixity of moral values and evaluation in girls’ lives. I argue that the ethnographic study of morality and Islam should take seriously moments of fun as important instances for ‘moral ludus’ or ‘moral play’ – the testing, shifting, and reshaping of the boundaries of moral behaviors that involve balancing the demands of various social fields and the larger ethical community in which a person is embedded. Based on two years of fieldwork and over a decade of follow up research, I suggest that these moments be viewed not as ruptures or instances of hypocrisy but as everyday occurrences of embedded agency in the lives of piety-minded individuals.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Olin 102

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