Symbolic distancing: Indonesian Muslim youth engaging with Korean television dramas
Article

This article deals with Indonesian Muslim youth engaging with Korean television dramas. This article employs observation and interview among 43 Indonesian Muslim youth. This study has shown that there is symbolic distancing that happens in Indonesia because of Islamic and Hallyu’s interaction and negotiation. Based on symbolic distancing concept, Indonesian Muslim youth engaging with Korean TV dramas involves the localized appropriation. Indonesian young Muslims believe that it is crucial to preserve Islamic values while consuming Korean TV dramas. Images and representations of Korean TV dramas basically do not reduce their Islamic identity. Ultimately, images and representations in Korean television dramas support their Muslim identity. Indonesian Muslim youth who enjoy watching Korean television dramas learn from the scenes depicted. However, these young Muslims also negotiate or even oppose the representations which contradict with their Islamic understandings. These images and representations have been appropriated based on their Islamic values.

Hybridization, Youth Subculture, and the Self-making of Senior Muslim Students in a Philippine Public High School
Article

Public schools are spaces for producing self-disciplined “pedagogized” bodies. But they are also a niche for students to create various subcultures that are different from the official school culture. When Muslim students enroll in public schools, they are positioned within these heterogenous spaces, yet as the present study shows, following the Foucauldian approach that ties culture to power and resistance, Muslim students are also able to create their own “techniques” of self-making that allow them to avoid the panoptic surveillance of the school while also blending, though not completely, with the mainstream culture of the students. This study, by focusing on senior Muslim students, maps out the various subcultural styles within the Makabayan school by relying exclusively on the emic categories of the students.