Social exclusion, religious capital, and the quality of life: Multiple case studies of Indonesia and Thailand

By analyzing the case of Indonesia and Thailand, this study fills the gap in quantitative studies on the importance of social factors at the community level. This research emphasized the relation of social exclusion and religious capital to quality of life, whereas previous researches generally used individual and economic factors as the basis. To elaborate the correlation between the three concepts above, this research used quantitative survey method with heads of households aged 18-64 years old as the population. The sample was drawn proportionally by means of multistage cluster sampling based on social class, religion and urban and rural sampling. For research in Indonesia, in-depth interviews were also conducted to obtain supporting data. The results show that social access and religious capital as social factors at the community level have different impacts on the quality of life in Indonesia and Thailand. Social access has more impact in Thailand, while it is religious capital in Indonesia. Theoretically, in heterogeneous society, religious capital plays important roles because it is primarily used to access resources. Trust and networking which are developed in a community will contribute to individuals’ subjective meaning in accordance with their quality of life.