Transforming Halal: Articulating Halal through Food Regulation, Representation, and Consumption in Contemporary Indonesia

Abstract

This study examines halal food as a dynamic site through which religious and national identities, state power, and everyday cultural practices are negotiated in contemporary Indonesia. Adopting a Cultural Studies approach, it shows that halal is not a static religious category but a contingent concept shaped contextually through regulation, representation, and everyday practices. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation, which proposes that the significance of cultural forms lies in their contextualised connections with other sociohistorical developments, my research uses qualitative interviews, ethnography and discourse analysis to unpack the articulations of halal across three domains. First, I analyse the regulation of halal food in Indonesia, focusing on the institutionalisation of halal governance and its entanglement with national politics, Islamic authority, and capitalist logics. Second, I explore how halal is represented in Jurnal Halal, published by the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI), revealing how religious discourse intersects with science, consumerism, and moral anxiety. Third, I investigate halal consumption practices among Indonesian Muslims in both urban and rural settings, as well as among the Indonesian diaspora in Australia. These case studies reveal how Muslims interpret, navigate, and negotiate halal in everyday life, balancing religious commitments with social, cultural, and emotional concerns. By demonstrating how halal is articulated across institutional, discursive, and lived dimensions, this study highlights the negotiation of Muslim identity in the context of Indonesia’s broader socio-political transformations. It shows how halal food serves not only as a marker of religious observance but also as a medium through which questions of modernity, morality, nationhood, and belonging are contested and reimagined.