Indonesian economy is being driven toward integration into the global free market economy. The integration process is signified by many signing of either regional or international trade agreement and government's rules and regulations to attract foreign capital. So many dissatisfaction among the people regarding the quality of life that they experienced under this kind of mode of economic, but the
re are seems so little understanding on the fundamental of their problems and also the fact that there are so difficult to look for feasible available option of alternative economy. This demonstrates how capitalism is widely accepted socially and politically as the only available economic system. However, one should notice that capitalism lives through the creation of scarcity, which is through the creation crisis. It can then be said that capitalism is the crisis itself. In this regard, the world economy in general and the Indonesian economy in particular are prone to crisis. Here, the economic crisis is defined as a structural disruption in the economic system. As every society has a great dependence on the economy, the impact of the economic crisis cannot be localized; it spreads wide to other sectors of society ranging from money devaluation, high rate of unemployment, food scarcity, environmental pollution or damage, up to marginalization of social class, ethnic, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and so on. We recognize that there are many of researches and studies on economic crisis and its socio-political impacts on society. However, most of the conducted researches and studies on these issues saw the economic crisis and its impacts from the standpoint of the state as one of the global players in the world economy, instead of the victim of the economic crisis: the people. The economic crisis is then viewed as a result of the invisible hand or the (global) market dynamic. Thus, such research and studies fail to recognize the root of the problem which causes the economic crisis, namely capitalism. On the other hand, however, research on how the people cope with the crisis in their daily live and – more importantly – research on an alternative model of economic system to capitalism are still a rarity. Those background bring with it an imperative to think that research on these subjects is highly relevant and should be developed and intensified to look for other possibilities. In order to answer this challenge, the Institute for Crisis Study and Alternative Development Strategy was established on November 28th 2008.
