From Praxis to Religious Articulation: Ecosufism as an Interpretive Horizon in the Ecoenzyme Practice of the BESTARI Community, Palembang

Dari Praksis menuju Artikulasi Keagamaan: Ekosufisme sebagai Horizon Interpretatif dalam Praktik Ekoenzim Komunitas BESTARI, Palembang

Abstract

This study examines how ecosufism functions as an interpretive horizon for environmental awareness that develops through repeated engagement in ecoenzyme practice within the Clean and Sustainable Environment (BESTARI) community in Palembang City. Using a qualitative instrumental case study design, with practice theory as its analytical lens, the study treats ecoenzyme production within BESTARI as a bounded case for examining how ecological and religious meaning develop within community-based ecological practice. The findings indicate that environmental awareness within the BESTARI community is not formed as a normative prerequisite for action but instead develops through repeated engagement in organic waste management practices: initially pragmatic domestic ecoenzyme practices gradually shape ecological dispositions through repetition, material engagement, and social interaction. For a minority of participants (2 of 10), these dispositions were subsequently articulated through Islamic vocabularies, including stewardship (khalifah) and moderation (zuhud), while the majority described the same practice in purely practical or social terms. Ecosufism, therefore, does not always function as the initial foundation of ecological action but can instead emerge, for some, as an outcome of practical experience in social life. On this basis, the study proposes, as a provisional analytical framework bounded by this single case, a Practice-Generated Ecosufism Framework: ecological awareness may form through a dialectical relationship between material practice, dispositional formation, and, for some participants, the articulation of religious values.