Religiously grounded educational loyalty: a multi-sited ethnography of pesantren in Madura

This study examines how educational loyalty to pesantren is enacted, negotiated, and reproduced in Madurese communities amid expanding schooling alternatives. Drawing on seventeen months of multi-sited ethnography (August 2024-December 2025) across twelve pesantren in four regencies, it combines participant observation, thirty-two semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes, and institutional and alumni documents. Rather than using religious fanaticism as a blanket descriptor, the analysis treats the locally invoked term fanatik as a contested, tightly delimited emic-analytic question and characterises the broader pattern as religiously grounded educational loyalty. Findings show that enrolment often operates as a pre-deliberative family practice; deviation can invite relational scrutiny, especially for women and families pursuing non-pesantren routes; kiai authority is affective, spiritual, and socially consequential; and institutional hybridisation reinforces local trust without always improving mobility beyond Madura. Pesantren persistence rests not only on adaptation but also on embodied socialisation, relational networks, and unequal conditions for voicing alternatives.