Regarding Religion and Work Culture: Fishermen of Jepara 1998-2013

Abstract

This research is intended to analyze the relationship patterns between Jepara's fishers community's religious ethics and work culture from 1998 to 2013 when the Regional Autonomy Policy is implemented in its inception phase. This research is a qualitative project with a historical design. This research is done in Jepara, the northern coastal region of Java Island, Indonesia. The research involves 15 research informants. Other data are sourced from documents on the life of fishers in Jepara. The data is gathered via text study and interview and verified using the triangulation method and member check. The analysis utilizes the "Historical Discourse Analysis." The results: (i) Religious ethics of the Jepara fishermen community are more ritualistically oriented than realistic. Religion does not become the rational foundation in fishermen's work culture development; (ii) Due to unrealistic religious ethics practice, fishers live bound in poverty with incapability of financial management, being tied in debt, living in a rented house, and hanging on subsistence pattern to survives; and (iii) Religion does not make fishers more optimistic in facing reality. Instead, it prompts them to be more "permissive" because the religious patterns are vertical, not horizontal. The intensity of religious practice concerning reality and humanity is minuscule. This research concludes that fishers' religious ethics in Jepara reinforce the assumption that easterner's society tends to separate religious practice and socio-economy affairs so that orientation to gather material wealth and improve work culture would be very difficult to be realized.