A B S T R A C TIslamic consumption promises to correct the ills of consumption yet relies on the logic of consumption for its appeal. Fashionably pious women in Indonesia have become figures of concern, suspected of being more invested in the material, and hence superficial, world than their virtuous appearances suggest. Arguing that consumption and religion are interdependent systems of faith, I show that women bear unusual semiotic burdens at the borders of materiality and piety. This approach reveals how pious Indonesian women must frame acts of pious consumption as disavowals of consumption and as expressions of beauty and modesty.
Through analysis of an increasingly popular phenomenon of courses training feminine comportment in Indonesia, I argue in this article that the appeal and work of femininity can be analyzed as a form of what TimothyMitchell has called the "rule of experts." Building on Mitchell, I suggest that expertise is central to authoritarian projects and postauthoritarian aftermath and is especially evident in zones that masquerade as least public and yet most self-evident. As a result, expertise gains its value from the conditions it claims to alleviate. Placing gender at the center of the analytical frame reveals these effects more clearly and can potentially expose the ideological contradictions that ground their allure.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.