“It all comes back to self-control?”: Unpacking the Discourse of Anti-corruption Education in Indonesia

Abstract

Contemporary educational studies on anti-corruption have largely been underpinned by the conception of corruption as a moral problem. Consequently, anti-corruption curricula were mainly developed around instilling the correct moral orientations, characters, or decisions in individuals. The current study departs from such theoretical approaches by critically deconstructing dominant discourses constituting anti-corruption education in an underrepresented yet highly relevant setting: Indonesia, a country deemed one of the most corrupt globally. Analyzing Indonesian anti-corruption educational policies, learning modules, textbooks, and other relevant anti-corruption campaign materials, the current study unearthed two dominant discourses in Indonesian anti-corruption education materials. The first is a discourse of neoliberalism, and the second is a discourse of individual morality and heroism. We discuss these findings in relation to the ways Western-originated agendas of rationalism, neoliberal capitalism, and individualism have become the central organizing principles through which anti-corruption educational praxis is imagined and enacted in the Global South. We propose that Indonesian anti-corruption education might find benefits in adopting critical and decolonial approaches to corruption and education more broadly.

Keywords:

• Anti-corruption education
• Indonesia
• morality
• neoliberalism
• discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Kanti Pertiwi receives funding from Universitas Indonesia grant number PKS-0630/UN2.F6.D/HKP.05.01/2022.