Learning to navigate the ethics of boundaries: schools, youth, and inter‐religious relationships in Manado, Indonesia

Abstract

AbstractContributing to recent debates on ethical self‐making, this article considers how Christian and Muslim youth in Manado, Indonesia, draw on various moral frameworks, and consequentially on both individual and community‐oriented modes of subjectivity in navigating inter‐religious encounters. The discussion foregrounds attitudes towards and normative expectations regarding inter‐religious marriage as an important lens through which the shifting salience of inter‐religious boundaries becomes apparent. Public discourses emphasize two contradictory frameworks for coexistence, projecting inter‐religious marriage alternatively as the foundation for coexistence and as a major social threat. A focus on high schools demonstrates how public ethical debates are channelled through institutions and relate to the ways that youth grapple with coexisting ethical frameworks in a religiously plural society. In addition, the article makes a case for investigating the role of institutions in moral learning, taking into account the normative work accomplished in schools as teachers and students deliberate about and circulate ethical frameworks.