"Secrets to Happy Polygamy": Shifting Masculinities in Indonesian Public Discourse

Sonja van Wichelen, Yale University

Recent developments in Indonesian Muslim politics reflect a broader wish to "Muslimize" Indonesian society. This desire is reflected in new manifestations of public Islam on different levels of civil society, seen for example in the emergence of Muslim intellectuals, Muslim media, the dissemination of new Islamic knowledge, Muslim attire and veiling, but also in the eruptions of controversial debates on Islam and gender. My paper for the seminar addresses one of these heated debates, namely polygamy, and analyzes the phenomenon of a pro-polygamy campaigner called Puspo Wardoyo. Rather than investigating polygamy as such, my main concern is to examine what is at stake in defending, justifying, or defying polygamy as promoted by the campaign. Through which frameworks were arguments defined and formulated? In what ways do gender, sexuality, and religiosity feed into these discussions? Reading the debate from the dynamic of a public phenomenon, I address the way in which the debate was cast, rather than concentrate on the theological justification of polygamy. In such a way, matters pertaining to Islam and gender are approached as entangled in different relations of power and dependent on particular spatio-temporal contexts. By scrutinizing the concept of hegemonic masculinity, I connect the new performances of masculinity to social changes in society. As a result, rather than affirming Muslim identity with the promotion of polygamy - as some would argue - my analysis suggests an affirmation or resilience of a form of hegemonic middle class manhood that had felt threatened by processes of both Islamization and democratization.

Sonja van Wichelen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University. She obtained her PhD in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation that focused on public debates of Islam and gender in contemporary Indonesia. Her current research-project centers on "transnational adoption" and examines adoption practices in the United States and the Netherlands. Together with Marc de Leeuw she is also preparing a manuscript provisionally entitled Transformations of Dutchness, which explores changing discourses of liberalism and tolerance in contemporary Dutch society.

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