Matter, Meaning, and Mutual Dependence
An Anthropological View of Indonesia’s Halal Governance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21776/Keywords:
anthropology of food, BPJPH, Cultural Materialism, Cultural Reason, halal certification, Halal industry, Indonesia, MUI, religious consumptionAbstract
This article develops an anthropological reading of Indonesia's halal industry by placing the symbolic dimensions of halal in dialogue with the material infrastructure that now governs its certification. Since the enactment of Law No. 33/2014 on Halal Product Assurance and its 2024 implementing regulation, halal in Indonesia has come to depend on a bifurcated institutional arrangement: the Halal Product Assurance Organizing Agency (BPJPH) administers certification, while the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) retains exclusive authority to issue the religious fatwa on which that certification depends. Using Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism and Marshall Sahlins's Cultural Reason as complementary lenses, the article treats this arrangement — informally known among practitioners as the "two-key system" — as an empirical site where material infrastructure and symbolic classification visibly compete and combine. Drawing on Indonesian halal regulation, BPJPH implementation data, and the rapid expansion of the Sehati self-declaration scheme for micro and small enterprises, the article argues that Indonesia's halal industrialization does not replace religious meaning with bureaucratic logic; rather, it routes religious meaning through bureaucratic form, producing a system in which state administration and religious authority are mutually dependent rather than mutually exclusive.
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