Talking poverty into policy: welfare keywords, moral economy, and the discursive governance of inequality in Indonesia

M. Rifa Jamaludin Nasir

doi:10.67490/ijle.v1i3.1020

Authors

M. Rifa Jamaludin Nasir Universitas Islam Negeri Salatiga Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.67490/ijle.v1i3.1020

Keywords:

datafication, inequality, moral economy, poverty discourse, welfare keywords

Abstract

Background: Indonesia’s poverty-policy discourse increasingly translates inequality into administrative categories, yet less is known about how welfare keywords govern public understandings of poverty, responsibility, and deservingness. Objective: This study examines how Indonesian welfare discourse constructs poverty as a policy object through recurring keywords, moral-economy frames, and discursive-governance mechanisms. Method: Using a corpus-assisted critical discourse design, this study analyses 31 public and verifiable documents comprising official policy texts, statistical communications, academic sources, and contextual media or institutional materials. Results: Welfare vocabulary is dominated by targeting, data integration, social assistance, poverty reduction, empowerment, vulnerability, and inequality, showing that poverty is linguistically stabilized before it becomes administratively actionable. Results: Moral-economy framing positions poor citizens simultaneously as vulnerable beneficiaries, verifiable recipients, and productive subjects expected to move toward self-reliance. Results: Discursive governance operates through datafication, beneficiary selection, institutional coordination, delivery accountability, risk protection, and developmental inclusion. Implication: These findings suggest that welfare language is not secondary communication about policy but part of policy governance itself. Novelty: This study contributes a tripartite analytical model that integrates keyword mapping, moral-economy analysis, and governance coding to explain how inequality is talked into policy in Indonesia

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