Living under the gaze: an ethnographic study of authority, embodied learning, and social reproduction in Indonesian pesantren educational practices

This ethnographic study examines everyday educational practices within Indonesian pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) and their function as social reproduction mechanisms through embodied authority and collective learning. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork across three pesantren in Madura, this research illuminates how authority is enacted, negotiated, and transformed through daily educational interactions among kyai (religious leaders), ustadz (teachers), and santri (students). Through participant observation, life history interviews, and reflexive engagement, this study demonstrates that pesantren educational practices operate as cultural transmission sites where traditional Islamic knowledge, social hierarchies, and moral dispositions are reproduced through embodied performances of respect, ritualised learning practices, and spatial arrangements. The findings reveal how santri agency emerges within rigid authoritarian structures, creating spaces for negotiation and micro-resistance that challenge linear narratives of religious socialisation. This ethnography contributes to understanding how educational institutions function simultaneously as cultural reproduction mechanisms and sites of social transformation.