As an emerging economy in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is poised to become one of the world’s top five economies in the coming decades. To achieve this, the nation has prioritized the development of a skilled youth labor force. 

Jessica Peng’s, assistant professor of anthropology, forthcoming book examines how global projections of Indonesia’s “rise” are orienting policy efforts towards developing skilled labor and  reshaping Indonesia's education system and societal perceptions of educated workers.

Peng talked with policymakers in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, as part of her ethnographic research. “I worked with education and labor policymakers, people who work on development projects, to capture a common narrative about the country’s urgent need for skilled labor," she explains. 

The book starts in the policy landscape but moves into how this promotion of vocational reforms shapes the everyday culture. Peng traveled to a vocational school in the rural region of Bone, South Sulawesi, an area known to be traditional fishers. “They're trying to revitalize the fishery economy,” she says, “and I spent some time in the vocational school in town that is trying to build these skilled fishers or aqua farmers as part of this wave of labor development efforts.”

For many families there is a shift from an informal model to a formal legible competency based kind of education. “Part of the curriculum is to really focus on defining concrete competencies,” Peng says. “And so they're deconstructing what is an everyday practice into stratified skills.”

This shift is accompanied by a broader societal change in attitudes toward education. “The kind of students that come out of this vocational system are socially celebrated as practical. They can just roll their sleeves up and get stuff done,” Peng notes. The ideal of the “high-achieving student,” focused on theoretical knowledge, is gradually giving way to a new appreciation for practical skills. This transformation is particularly significant in the post-Asian financial crisis era, where individuals who contribute tangible solutions to community challenges are increasingly valued.

Peng’s research is bridging the gap between the economy and education in a labor market. “Education isn’t really thought of as a key vehicle of capitalist development,” she says. As a former classroom teacher and having done work in education development, Peng is bringing the individual voices into the broader topic of economics.

“Young people and students and their families are at the core of what I hope this book addresses, even though it is really a much broader story about the politics of capitalism.”