Introduction

The opening of East Java Multipurpose Terminal in October 2024 [1], now partly operational and on continuous upgrade and expansion, created a rare field site for studying globalization at the scale where it first becomes socially concrete. In Paciran, a coastal religious community long shaped by pesantren education, pilgrimage, small commerce, and the memory of Sunan Drajat now shares a narrow coastal corridor with a deep-water multipurpose terminal, shorebase facilities, industrial compounds, and district-level growth in foreign labor. Yet the early evidence does not show a community rushing into dense intercultural contact with port actors. It shows a more selective pattern: minimal engagement toward port authority and foreign industrial labor, alongside a much more public but carefully curated openness toward foreign religious visitors at the Sunan Drajat tomb and museum.

Paciran is a coastal subdistrict of Lamongan Regency, East Java, Indonesia, on the Java Sea north coast. Pondok Pesantren Sunan Drajat is a large Islamic boarding school and economic institution founded in 1977 by KH. Abdul Ghofur [2] and connected by lineage, place, and religious memory to the Wali Songo saint Sunan Drajat. The Tanjung Pakis and EJMT terminal is a newly internationally connected multipurpose port terminal, formally opened in October 2024 and discussed in local policy sources as a site targeted for further status upgrading by 2027 [3]. This article compares two categories of global actor now visible in the same coastal area: port authority and foreign industrial labor, on the one hand, and foreign religious tourists visiting Makam and Museum Sunan Drajat, on the other. The observation window is 2024-2026, read against a 1996-2020 historical baseline from prior scholarship. The case matters because it is a live natural experiment in how an economically self-sufficient religious community manages globalization on its own terms.

The puzzle is sharpened by Paciran's earlier history of tourism debate. Our ethnographic work on Masyarakat Santri dan Pariwisata, first produced in the 1990s and republished in 2020, recorded a community already split over the moral and economic meanings of tourism. One informant, Zulkifli, warned that tourism might become increasingly difficult to control: "...apalagijika para wisatawanasingtelahmasuk. Lebihbaikkitatidakmengembangkanpariwisata..." ["...especially once foreign tourists have entered. It is better that we not develop tourism..."] [4]. Another, Laili Azkiyah, accepted the attractions' value yet worried about religious vulnerability: "Bila obyek-obyekpariwisatatersebutterusdikembangkan, niscayabanyak orang luar yang datanguntukmengunjungi. Apabilaimanmasyarakatsantrikurangtebal, niscayaterpengaruh oleh budayaasing yang dibawa para wisatawanasingtersebut" ["If those tourism objects continue to be developed, many outsiders will certainly come to visit. If the faith of the santri community is not firm, it will surely be influenced by the foreign culture brought by those foreign tourists"] [4]. These statements identify anxiety over foreign presence as a question of moral filtering rather than a demand for outright closure.

Three decades later, that anxiety appears to have been institutionalized through differentiated access rather than generalized resistance. The Disbudporapar figures cited in the research dossier record 184 foreign visitors to Museum Sunan Drajat and 96 foreign visitors to Wisata Bahari Lamongan in 2024 [5], while the industrial channel records district-level growth in foreign labor without a publicly verified breakdown by company or industrial compound [6]. The port itself is legally anchored in the 2014 master-plan regulation for Pelabuhan Brondong Terminal Umum Tanjung Pakis Lamongan [7] and is now operated through ICTSI-linked corporate arrangements [8], with EJMT formally opened in October 2024 [1]. The data therefore place two forms of foreign presence within the same locality. One is ritual and tourist-oriented, entering sacred-semipublic and commercial zones. The other is industrial and corporate, physically present but spatially enclosed.

The central question is: why and how does the Pondok Pesantren Sunan Drajat community in Paciran apply different engagement patterns toward two categories of port globalization actor, namely minimal engagement and unilateral boundary-setting toward port authority and foreign labor, compared with curated openness toward foreign religious tourists at religious-tourism sites? The theoretical design assigns one analytical engine to each sub-question, and situates the puzzle against a specific gap in the literature developed in the next section.

The theoretical design assigns one analytical engine to each sub-question. Glocalization theory explains the strategies and their variation by zone and actor category. As Robertson [9] argues, globalization is not cultural homogenization; it is produced through the mutual formation of the global and the local. Appadurai's account of disjunctive global flows further helps specify why people, capital, images, technologies, and institutions do not arrive together or produce identical local effects [10], [11]. Intergroup contact theory explains why PPSD's economic independence and religious moderation appear to enable unilateral boundary-setting rather than continuing negotiation. Contrary to a straightforward reading of Allport's optimal-contact conditions, the Paciran evidence suggests that institutional support for contact may be actively withheld by the community's own authority, not merely absent because of state or corporate failure [12], [13]. Diffusion of innovation explains how santri develop cross-cultural competence through LPBA language training, maritime-vocational schooling, and pesantren business networks rather than through intensive direct contact with port actors [14].

The term santri (students and members of a pesantren-centered Muslim milieu) is used here in this wider sociological sense, beyond enrolled students. The term kiai refers to a recognized Islamic religious authority whose legitimacy rests on learning, lineage, charisma, and institutional leadership. The term pesantren refers to an Islamic boarding-school institution, but in the PPSD case it also names a religious-economic complex with schools, higher education, retail, travel, food, and production units.

The argument is therefore not that Paciran is closed to globalization. The argument is that PPSD practices graduated boundary management: it preserves a sacred-closed educational core, curates sacred-semipublic access at the tomb and museum, accepts open commercial circulation in profane tourism spaces, and treats industrial globalization as spatially enclosed within corporate compounds. This contributes to interdisciplinary IR and Islamic area studies by reframing coastal santri diplomacy as a domestic, micro-scale practice of selective access and selective refusal. The scope is deliberately narrow: Paciran, 2024-2026, PPSD, EJMT/Tanjung Pakis, Lamongan Shorebase, i-Sentra, and four named contact zones. National port policy, national religious-moderation campaigns, and other Paciran research strands such as piety tourism or socio-ecological conflict resilience enter only where they clarify this comparative mechanism.

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

This question responds to a gap in three bodies of work. Paciran scholarship has examined santri meanings of tourism and family change under tourism industrialization, but not the comparative management of port authority, foreign labor, and foreign religious visitors in one pesantren-port case [4], [15]. Contact theory has usually asked whether more contact reduces prejudice under better or worse conditions, yet this case asks what happens when a local religious authority itself limits institutional support for contact [12], [13]. The emerging literature on santri diplomacy has begun to treat santri as informal cultural envoys in transnational circulation, but it has not yet tested whether diplomacy can also work domestically through the deliberate limitation of contact [16]. The same gap appears in the pesantren-modernization literature. Azra, Heriyudanta, and Bashori describe pesantren as institutions that adapt while retaining tafaqquh fi al-din (deepening religious understanding), and Ningtias shows modernization of learning in PP Sunan Drajat and Karangasem [17], [18], [19], [20]. These studies explain institutional adaptation, yet they do not compare how one pesantren community treats different global actor categories in the same locality. The IR literature on moderate Islam and non-state Muslim diplomacy likewise broadens the diplomatic field beyond the state, but it seldom reaches the level of daily boundary rules around a port, a tomb, a market, and a pesantren compound [21], [22].

The first theoretical frame is glocalization. Robertson's formulation treats the global and the local as co-constituted rather than sequential, while Appadurai's account of ethnoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, and technoscapes gives a vocabulary for flows that move at different speeds and through different institutions [9], [10], [11].

The second theoretical frame is intergroup contact theory, reframed as boundary management. Allport's four optimal conditions, equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and institutional support, have shaped later work on prejudice reduction, and Pettigrew and Tropp's meta-analysis of 515 studies found that contact tends to reduce Pettigrew and Tropp's meta-analysis of 515 studies found that contact tends to reduce prejudice even without all ideal conditions present [12], [13]. This article does not test prejudice reduction. It uses the theory to examine the prior decision over whether contact should be institutionally supported at all.

The third theoretical frame is diffusion of innovation. Rogers defines diffusion as the communication of an innovation through channels over time among members of a social system, and he identifies stages of adoption and attributes such as relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and observability [14].

The three frameworks are assigned non-overlapping analytical work rather than layered onto the same evidence: glocalization organizes the first sub-question (why access mechanisms vary by zone and actor category), boundary management organizes the second (why economic independence and religious moderation permit unilateral control over Allport’s institutional-support condition), and diffusion of innovation organizes the third (how cross-cultural competence is built through internal channels). This division of labor is maintained through Method, Result and Analysis, and Conclusion.

Method

Building on the theoretical framework above, this section operationalizes each concept into observable indicators and specifies the data corpus and analytical procedure.

This article uses an ethnographic case-study design in which early field evidence from our previous research has already uncovered problem, with the goal of continuing and deepening what we have found in previous research but with more recent context on the port construction & operation. Hence the case is neither Paciran nor Indonesian port development in general. It is the differentiated management of global actor categories around Pondok Pesantren Sunan Drajat after the 2024 opening of EJMT [1], read through four contact zones. Ethnographic case study is appropriate because the central evidence concerns emic boundaries, moral authority, ritual etiquette, access rules, and local classifications of acceptable and unacceptable presence. The design is comparative within a single locality: it compares actor categories across zones rather than comparing Paciran with another region.

In this study, glocalization is operationalized through observable variation in access mechanisms across the four zones: whether entry is closed, permitted with ritual etiquette, commercially open, or contained inside industrial property. The indicators are spatial boundary, visitor category, authority over access, language or mediation used for visitors, and the extent to which global presence is absorbed into locally legitimate forms such as ziarah or pesantren business.

The indicators are the frequency and duration of kiai-port contact, the presence or absence of a continuing institutional relationship, explicit boundary statements, acceptance or refusal of assistance, reported movement of foreign workers outside company space, and inclusion or exclusion of pesantren in corporate social responsibility schemes.

In this study, diffusion is operationalized through internal pesantren institutions that build competence without relying on direct contact with EJMT or foreign labor. The observable indicators are LPBA's place in nonformal graduation, the SMK Sunan Drajat curriculum structure, the presence of maritime programs such as Nautika Kapal Penangkap Ikan and Konstruksi Kapal Baja, the 70 percent practice and 30 percent theory vocational formulation, Mandarin as local content, industry partners such as Kementerian Kelautan dan Perikanan, Disperikanan Lamongan, PT Meratus Line, PT DOK Lamongan, PT ASDP, and PT Lamongan Marine Industri, and the role of KH. Abdul Ghofur and Gus Anas Al Hifni as opinion leaders.

The four-zone comparison also functions as an internal validity strategy. A claim about “openness” or “closure” inferred from any single site alone would be too coarse, since each site’s access rule reflects its own institutional logic rather than the community’s general disposition toward foreignness. The corporate CSR review triangulates the kiai-side account at the documentary level, taken from secondary data available in various sources in the internet. The study therefore asks the same comparative question across four settings that differ in sacred status, ownership, and access rule. Evidence counts as support for graduated boundary management only when the pattern varies systematically by zone and actor category, rather than merely reproducing the obvious access rule of one site.

The language protocol treats Indonesian, Javanese, and Arabic terms as part of the data. Direct Indonesian quotations are retained in the original and translated in brackets, while key terms such as tawassuth, tasamuh, i'tidal, santri, kiai, pesantren, and ziarah are not replaced by shifting English paraphrases after first definition. This is a methodological choice, since the boundaries under study are carried by local terms and the authority relations they index.

The coding procedure follows three linked passes. The first pass identifies actor categories, port authority, foreign industrial labor, foreign religious tourists, domestic pilgrims, students, kiai, managers, and village or government officers. The second pass codes boundary devices, including permission, etiquette, compound security, financial refusal, CSR routing, curriculum, language training, and business mediation. The third pass assigns each device to one theoretical question: glocalization for zone variation, contact/boundary management for institutional support or refusal, and diffusion for internal competence formation.

Our data of the completed key-informant interview with KH. Abdul Ghofur [2]; Anshori's Masyarakat Santri dan Pariwisata as the historical baseline [4]; the port and industrial dossier compiling named primary sources such as ICTSI releases [1], [8], LPDB-KUMKM releases [23], [24], Disbudporapar data [5], Satu Data Kabupaten Lamongan [6], BPS references [25], Pemkab Lamongan statements [3], and the relevant transport regulations [7]; and supporting Paciran files on PPSD education and economy. No outside empirical source is added. Where the attached materials mark a claim as unverified, the manuscript preserves that uncertainty rather than resolving it through recall.

Key interview with KH. Abdul Ghofur has been completed, while other data and informants across pesantren leadership, economic management, SMK vocational management, KSOP/EJMT, HRD-CSR staff at industrial companies, religious-tourism site managers, foreign visitors, and village officials are taken from publicly available data from the internet. The corporate CSR review triangulates the kiai-side account at the documentary level, taken from secondary data available in various sources in the internet. The analysis therefore uses abduction: it starts from an anomaly in the field material, compares it with the theoretical expectations, and refines the working propositions without treating them as saturated findings.

Result and Discussion

The results are organized by contact zone and actor category because the main empirical finding is spatially differentiated engagement. The same locality produces graduated boundary management rather than one general attitude toward foreignness. At one end, PPSD's residential and educational core remains sacred-closed. At another, the tomb and museum allow foreign visitors through a sacred-semipublic format. Commercial tourism spaces are open to general visitors. Industrial spaces are enclosed by corporate property and security. This pattern is neither total segregation nor unrestricted openness. It is a local zoning grammar.

This organization also makes visible what the current evidence cannot show It cannot yet measure everyday attitudes toward foreign workers, since they have not been independently interviewed and district data are not disaggregated by industrial site, but it can map the rules by which foreign presence is kept near or distant. The result is a boundary map rather than an attitude survey.

The sacred-closed core is the PPSD residential and educational complex in Banjarwati and Banjaranyar. The sacred-closed core is the PPSD residential and educational complex in Banjarwati and Banjaranyar, whose 1977 founding and Sunan Drajat lineage were introduced above. This zone contains students, teachers, dormitories, internal learning, religious authority, and business management. The relevant openness mechanism is not tourism access but institutional permission. The documents reviewed do not provide a published public visitor standard operating procedure for outsiders entering the residential-educational core. That absence indicates the pesantren core is not organized as a contact site for global actors, even though PPSD itself is modern and institutionally expansive.

The sacred-semipublic curated zone consists of Makam and Museum Sunan Drajat. This is the main counter-case to any interpretation that the santri community simply excludes foreign presence. Foreign visitors are present here, but their presence is absorbed into pilgrimage, history, museum display, etiquette, and sacred architecture. Disbudporapar data cited in the dossier record 184 foreign visitors and 139,945 domestic visitors to Museum Sunan Drajat in 2024 [5]. The mechanism is not ordinary openness. It is ritual and spatial mediation: visitors approach through a terraced sacred setting, encounter pilgrimage norms, and meet a site whose meaning is already regulated by the heritage of Sunan Drajat. The outline notes bilingual web mediation through national tourism materials, though on-site multilingual protocols remain undocumented publicly. In this zone, foreignness is acceptable because it is curated through ziarah, history, and etiquette.

The profane-commercial open zone includes Wisata Bahari Lamongan and Taman Kuliner Paciran. Here, global actor categories matter less because the governing norm is commercial access. Disbudporapar data record 96 foreign visitors and 382,228 domestic visitors to WBL in 2024 [5]. In Anshori's historical baseline, Tanjung Kodok, Gua Maharani, and related tourism sites already stood as spaces where economic benefit and moral anxiety met. Anshori records that Paciran tourism combined natural and pilgrimage attractions, including Gua Alam Istana Maharani, Tanjung Kodok, Makam Sunan Drajad, and Makam Sendang Duwur, each with facilities such as prayer spaces, public toilets, food stalls, and shopping areas [4]. In the current mapping, commercial spaces remain the most open, but they do not define the moral rules of the pesantren core.

The industrial-enclosed zone includes EJMT/Tanjung Pakis, Lamongan Shorebase, and i-Sentra. The port dossier identifies the legal and corporate transformation of this zone: PM 66/2014 provided the master-plan basis for Pelabuhan Brondong Terminal Umum Tanjung Pakis Lamongan [7]; ICTSI acquired a majority stake in PT East Java Development in 2022 [8]; EJMT formally opened for business on 2 October 2024; and the deep-water terminal began operations in mid-October 2024 [1]. The same dossier notes technical specifications such as a 300-meter quay line, a 13.5-meter LAT draft, and a 500-meter swinging basin [8]. For the social analysis, the core finding is not the port's engineering profile but its relational separation. Foreign workers are reported by the kiai-side interview as remaining inside the port or company compound and not entering residential public roads or settlements. Public data do not yet provide a verified company-level breakdown of foreign workers at Lamongan Shorebase or i-Sentra.

Table 1 presents the comparative pattern Its analytical purpose is to show graduated, not binary, segregation across the four zones derived from the glocalization framework. Sacred and industrial spaces are both bounded, but they are bounded for different reasons and by different authorities. Tourism spaces are open, but the tomb and museum are not open in the same way as commercial leisure sites.

Table 1. Comparative Engagement Patterns Across Four Contact Zones in Paciran

Source: compiled from interview [2], Anshori's historical baseline [4], the Disbudporapar 2025 visitor data summarized in the research dossier [5], transport [7] and ICTSI materials [1], [8] summarized in the port dossier, and the corporate CSR review.

The gradient in Table 1 is consistent with glocalization theory because the global does not enter Paciran through one channel. It enters through distinct institutional carriers: ships, cranes, and corporate management in the industrial zone; pilgrims and tourists in the sacred-semipublic zone; leisure visitors in commercial sites; and language, vocational, and business networks inside PPSD. Each carrier is localized through its own rule, which is why the same community accepts foreign visitors at the tomb while maintaining a minimal relationship with port authority.

This gradient also shows why the industrial zone should not be conflated with the commercial zone. Both are profane in the sense that neither is organized around worship or pesantren residence, yet they differ in the form of access. WBL and Taman Kuliner Paciran invite circulation. EJMT, Lamongan Shorebase, and i-Sentra organize access through gates, work authorization, corporate management, and port regulation.

The clearest interaction chronology concerns the kiai and port authority. Our interview revealed how the initial period contact with parties connected to the port project happened. The informant refers to "pihak terkait Prabowo" ["parties related to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto"]. When the port began operating, our interview reveals how one meeting between the kiai and port representatives claiming to that relation was held in order to smoothen the port operation. At that meeting, the kiai articulated a boundary: "jangan mencampuri urusan agama dan hal-hal di luar itu" ["do not interfere in religious affairs and matters beyond that (port related business and activities)"].

The meeting did not become a continuing institutional dialogue. The result is a chronology of contact, boundary statement, refusal of dependency, and no continuation. In the preliminary Paciran material, the first meeting appears instead as a boundary event. It defines a domain that the port side should not enter, and the subsequent absence of recorded follow-up becomes part of the finding rather than a missing episode in a larger negotiation. So the port is welcomed, but given limitation.

The CSR evidence strengthens that pattern without fully closing it. The kiai-side interview reports that CSR, went mainly to factories and surrounding villages rather than to the pesantren. The dossier's corporate review independently reports no publicly documented CSR relationship between PT Eastern Logistics or Lamongan Shorebase, PT Jakamitra Indonesia or i-Sentra, and any pesantren in Paciran. Publicly documented corporate engagement instead appears directed toward villages, fishing groups, schools, and local government programs.

The tourism contrast is equally significant. In the tomb and museum zone, foreign visitors are numerically visible and morally legible. Their presence is framed by reverence, history, etiquette, and the Sunan Drajat heritage. In WBL and culinary-commercial spaces, foreign visitors are fewer in the available figures and enter through ordinary commercial access. The result is a two-category contrast: the community can curate openness toward foreign religious tourists because they enter an already meaningful ritual economy, while it can limit institutional contact with port authority and foreign labor because those actors are powerful, corporate, and religiously nonessential to the pesantren's reproduction. This contrast also explains why the older fear of foreign tourists did not become a blanket refusal. The concern recorded by Anshori has been displaced into rules of place. Foreign visitors at the tomb are placed inside a religious-historical script, while foreign workers in the industrial compound remain inside a corporate script the pesantren does not need to sponsor.

The evidence on internal diffusion completes the empirical picture. LPBA, SMK Sunan Drajat, and the PPSD business network show that cross-cultural competence is not absent merely because port contact is limited. The dossier records LPBA as part of the pesantren's nonformal training, while SMK Sunan Drajat combines maritime-vocational programs with pesantren content and Mandarin. The curriculum profile cited in the dossier gives a 70 percent practice and 30 percent theory formulation, and lists industry connections in fisheries, shipping, docks, ferry services, and marine industry. PPSD's economic network also includes Toserba Toserba Sunan Drajat, Sundra Wisata, and Restoran Sunan Drajat, while LPDB-KUMKM data identify seven Toserba units and large turnover figures [24]. The port is nearby, but it is not the necessary social school for santri cosmopolitanism.

The comparative answer is direct: PPSD and its surrounding santri community apply boundary management toward institutionally powerful but religiously nonessential industrial-port actors, while reserving curated openness for foreign actors whose presence can be absorbed into established ritual, educational, and economic frames. Port authority and foreign industrial labor are accordingly handled through minimal engagement and spatial containment, while foreign religious tourists are received through pilgrimage and museum forms: a differentiated sovereignty over contact, not a contradiction between openness and closure.

For the first sub-question, glocalization explains why the strategy differs by actor category. Robertson's account of global-local co-formation helps interpret the four-zone structure as a local production of globalization rather than a reaction after globalization has already arrived [9]. Appadurai's disjunctive flows sharpen the point: the port brings financescapes, technoscapes, and corporate authority; the tomb and museum bring ethnoscapes of pilgrimage and tourism; PPSD's schools and businesses bring mediascapes, language practices, distribution networks, and educational aspirations [10], [11]. Because these flows enter through different institutions, the community localizes each through its own access rule rather than one consistent level of openness.

This glocalized zoning also revises the inherited sacred-profane contrast. The pesantren core is sacred-closed, while the tomb and museum are sacred-semipublic. WBL is profane-commercial and open, while the port is profane-industrial and enclosed. The difference is not just sacredness. It is whether foreign presence arrives under a locally recognized script. Ziarah gives foreign religious visitors a script. Commercial tourism gives WBL visitors a market script. Port authority and foreign labor arrive through corporate hierarchy, security, and the state-regulated labor regime. Those scripts are socially intelligible but not religiously needed by PPSD. The resulting four-tier zonation is the mechanism through which glocalization becomes concrete.

For the second sub-question, intergroup contact theory helps explain why economic independence and religious moderation enable unilateral boundary-setting rather than continuing negotiation. Allport's institutional-support condition is often read as something a benevolent authority supplies to improve the quality of contact [12]. In Paciran, the central preliminary finding is the reverse: the kiai appears to restrict institutional support for further contact with port actors. The statement "jangan mencampuri urusan agama dan hal-hal di luar itu" ["do not interfere in religious affairs and matters beyond that"] is not an invitation to equal-status cooperation. It is a limit on the domain of relationship. Pettigrew and Tropp's finding that contact effects vary with conditions allows this move analytically, because it treats the conditions as variables rather than as moral assumptions that must always be maximized [13].

Economic autonomy is the enabling condition for that limit. PPSD's documented business ecology means that refusal of assistance is credible. LPDB-KUMKM figures in the dossier identify seven Toserba units with Rp115 billion turnover in 2024 [24] and a KSBP/PPSD trajectory reaching Rp90 billion by late 2023 [23]. The exact internal allocation of these funds is not established by the public corpus, but the scale of commercial activity is enough to support the autonomy-capital claim. PPSD's economic base changes the contact game: assistance can be declined without producing immediate organizational risk. Boundary management is therefore not merely moral confidence. It is moral confidence backed by institutional solvency.

Religious moderation matters here, but not in the thin sense of unlimited acceptance. The relevant values are tawassuth (taking the middle path), tasamuh (forbearance or tolerance), and i'tidal (upright balance), together with the local Sunan Drajat inheritance of Catur Piwulang and Pepali Pitu. In the evidence available, moderation does not erase boundaries. It legitimates the capacity to distinguish kinds of contact. The community can avoid hostility toward port actors, permit industrial development to remain spatially present, and still refuse to let port authority enter religious affairs. This is a confident reading; a more defensive reading would argue that declining institutional contact instead expresses anxiety over contamination. The current evidence cannot entirely exclude that reading, given Anshori's historical record of fear over foreign tourists. Yet the tourism counter-case weakens a purely defensive account. The same tradition that limits port involvement also allows foreign religious tourists into curated sacred space.

For the third sub-question, diffusion of innovation explains why direct port contact is not the operative mechanism behind santri cosmopolitan competence. Rogers's theory directs attention to channels, time, social systems, and opinion leaders, not simply to face-to-face encounters with foreign others [14]. LPBA, SMK Sunan Drajat, maritime programs, Mandarin content, practice-oriented vocational structure, BKK placement functions, and cross-regional business networks operate as diffusion channels. KH. Abdul Ghofur supplies normative legitimacy for adopting education that fits the age without breaking inheritance. Gus Anas Al Hifni supplies managerial and economic momentum through the business complex. The diffusion finding is therefore distinct from the contact finding. Santri acquire languages, maritime aspirations, and market-facing competence through pesantren-designed institutions even where port contact remains minimal.

This has consequences for the concept of santri diplomacy. Xue and Utama [16] read santri diplomacy through Indonesian students and cultural representation in China, a transnational register of informal envoys built through mobility, media, and academic exchange; the Paciran case extends the concept downward in scale (domestic-micro rather than transnational-organizational) and sideways in mechanism (spatial and institutional rather than primarily representational). Most of all, it shows that diplomacy can work through the control of contact, rather than solely through its expansion. Coastal santri diplomacy here is a practice of saying where global actors may enter, under what script, and with which limits. That is a diplomatic act because it defines a relationship between a local non-state religious authority and agents of global capital, labor, and mobility.

The argument can be adjudicated against the three revised propositions as follows. Table 2 is not a second results table. It evaluates how the preliminary evidence bears on the theory-derived propositions.

Table 2. Adjudication of Initial Propositions Against Preliminary Field Evidence.

Source note: compiled from our interview [2], the LPDB-KUMKM [23], [24] and PPSD economic materials, the SMK and LPBA dossier, and the port/industrial CSR review.

As Table 2 indicates, the strongest proposition at this stage is the four-tier zonation proposition. It rests on multiple forms of evidence: official visitor counts, site categories, the absence of a public guest protocol for the pesantren core, the public openness of tourism sites, and the physical enclosure of industrial compounds. The autonomy-capital proposition is also strong, but it depends on the interpretation of the kiai's refusal and the exact status of the unclear transcript segment about financial assistance. The diffusion proposition is conceptually strong and supported by institutional data, yet needs alumni and staff interviews before santri’s lived competence can be assessed.

A contact-theory counter-reading deserves attention. One might argue that the absence of continuing contact places the case outside contact theory altogether. The field anomaly concerns the politics of creating or withholding the very conditions under which contact can occur. When the kiai declines to provide institutional backing for ongoing port-pesantren contact, he is acting on Allport's fourth condition. This makes the case relevant to contact theory because it shows a local community authority controlling the institutional support variable from below. Contact theory usually worries about prejudice when contact is forced, unequal, or unsupported. Paciran adds a case where support is limited by the group that external actors might expect to incorporate.

Two further counter-readings deserve attention. The four-zone model might be read as ordinary functional differentiation rather than glocalization, since schools have access rules, tombs have etiquette, markets are open, and ports have security. That is partly true, yet each functional rule also translates a global flow into a local moral order, so functional differentiation becomes glocalization precisely when it handles global arrival through local legitimacy. A related objection would treat LPBA and SMK programs as ordinary modernization rather than diffusion of innovation. Rogers’s theory avoids that flat reading because it asks how innovations move through a social system and why they are adopted: language training, maritime practice, and vocational partnerships are adopted because they fit pesantren goals and are legitimated by opinion leadership, consistent with Azra’s [17] and Ningtias’s [20] accounts of selective pesantren modernization

It may be tempting to say that LPBA and SMK programs are simply modernization, not diffusion of innovation. Rogers's theory avoids that flat reading because it asks how innovations move through a social system and why they are adopted. In PPSD, language training, maritime practice, Mandarin content, business units, and vocational partnerships are not detached modern additions. They become acceptable because they are compatible with pesantren goals, observable in institutional success, and legitimated by opinion leadership. Azra's account of pesantren modernization as retention of religious learning amid institutional adaptation supports this reading, as do Heriyudanta and Bashori's discussions of pesantren modernization through Azyumardi Azra's lens [17], [18], [19]. Ningtias's work on learning-system modernization in PP Sunan Drajat and Karangasem further places Paciran pesantren within a longer pattern of selective educational change [20].

The broader Islamic-studies literature helps guard against two mistaken interpretations. First, Woodward's work on Islam in Java cautions against treating local expression as diluted Islam; Javanese Islamic practice may be normatively serious while locally embedded [26], [27]. This matters because curated pilgrimage space should not be dismissed as mere heritage commodification. Second, Picard's work on cultural tourism shows how tourism can make communities more self-conscious about cultural possession and display, even while creating economic benefit and anxiety [28], [29]. In Paciran, Anshori's wong mlarat, wong cukup, and wong sugeh distinction already showed that economic and religious meanings of tourism interact rather than exclude each other [4]. The broader Islamic-studies literature guards against two misreadings. Woodward's work on Islam in Java cautions against treating local expression as diluted Islam, since Javanese practice may be normatively serious while locally embedded [26], [27]; Picard's work on cultural tourism shows how tourism makes communities more self-conscious about cultural possession and display [28], [29]. Anshori's wong mlarat, wong cukup, and wong sugeh distinction already showed that economic and religious meanings of tourism interact rather than exclude each other [4], an insight this article extends from tourism to port globalization.

The IR contribution lies in non-state diplomacy at local scale. Umar's genealogy of "moderate Islam" in Indonesian foreign policy treats moderation as a politically layered discourse, while Nubowo's account of NU and Muhammadiyah as soft-power actors extends diplomacy beyond the state [21], [22]. Paciran adds a smaller register: a pesantren community can perform diplomacy by regulating the terms on which global actors appear at home, without representing Indonesia abroad. This is not formal public diplomacy and not state-led soft power. It is domestic boundary diplomacy by a religious institution whose authority comes from lineage, education, economy, and local trust.

The youth and education literature also shifts the interpretation from passive protection to active formation. Nilan and Mansfield's work on Indonesian Muslim youth and Nilan's later work on Muslim youth point to youth agency in engaging media, popular culture, and global aspiration [30], [31]. In PPSD, the santri are not merely shielded from the port. They are formed through language, vocational practice, and business exposure inside institutions that remain religiously legible. Nisa et al., Rahman and Mulyana, and Setia and Rahman frame religious moderation as requiring communication, education, and social practice, The youth and education literature shifts the interpretation from passive protection to active formation: Nilan and Mansfield's and Nilan's work on Indonesian Muslim youth agency [30], [31] suggests santri are formed through language, vocational practice, and business exposure rather than merely shielded from the port, while Nisa et al., Rahman and Mulyana, and Setia and Rahman frame religious moderation as requiring communication and education [32], [33], [34], consistent with moderation in Paciran appearing as trained discernment rather than borderless contact.

A modest policy implication follows from the evidence. Corporate CSR programs in the industrial corridor need not assume that villages, schools, and fishing groups exhaust the relevant local institutions. An inclusive framework could invite pesantren participation through vocational scholarships, language training, or alumni placement channels while leaving doctrine, worship, and internal governance outside corporate reach, testing whether CSR inclusion can coexist with boundary management rather than dissolving it.

The main implication for contact theory is therefore precise. Paciran is not evidence against contact. It is evidence that contact must be preceded by authority over contact conditions. This is the theoretical yield of coastal santri diplomacy as boundary management: selective openness is not a halfway stage between isolation and integration. It is the mechanism. The case also cautions against equating harmony with high contact intensity: harmony here is partly produced by low contact where the actor category lacks ritual or educational value for the pesantren, a different social technology from interfaith dialogue or tourism hospitality, though one that may coexist with them in the same district.

Conclusion

This article has argued that Pondok Pesantren Sunan Drajat and its surrounding Paciran santri community apply different engagement patterns toward port globalization because global actors enter different moral and spatial regimes. Toward port authority and foreign industrial labor, the evidence shows minimal engagement, one explicit boundary statement, refusal of dependency-producing assistance, and workers contained within company compounds; toward foreign religious tourists, curated openness operates through ziarah etiquette, terraced sacred space, and heritage mediation. The contrast is not between anti-global closure and pro-global openness. It is between industrial actors treated as religiously nonessential and potentially intrusive, and religious tourists treated as absorbable within established ritual and economic frames. In that sense, the answer to the comparative research question is that PPSD differentiates engagement by asking whether a global actor can be placed within a legitimate local script. When the answer is yes, as with pilgrimage and museum visitation, openness is allowed but curated. When the answer is no, as with corporate port authority seeking a relationship that could blur religious autonomy, the boundary is stated and the relationship is kept minimal.

The theoretical contribution is to recast coastal santri diplomacy as boundary management. Intergroup contact theory, reframed through boundary management, explains why PPSD's economic independence and religious moderation allow local control over Allport's institutional-support condition. Diffusion of innovation explains how santri cross-cultural competence can be built through LPBA, SMK maritime-vocational programs, Mandarin content, industry partners, business networks, and opinion leadership without requiring intensive direct contact with the port. This extends the santri-diplomacy literature from transnational representation to domestic micro-diplomacy, where the central act is defining the boundary of permissible contact.

The article's claim is therefore deliberately modest in evidentiary scope and stronger in conceptual direction. It does not claim that all coastal pesantren will respond in the same way, nor that PPSD's current pattern will remain unchanged. It claims that the Paciran evidence is already enough to name a mechanism that existing literatures tend to miss: diplomacy by selective boundary control.

The limitations are substantial and must remain visible. The field evidence rests on one completed key-informant interview with KH. Abdul Ghofur, supplemented by documentary triangulation. The port and company side has not yet directly and independently confirmed the one-meeting chronology, the confinement of foreign workers, or the rationale behind CSR allocation, and two transcript segments, the reference to parties terkait Prabowo and the saving offer, currently triangulated from the publicly available news that the port is operating just fine. It should also test the four-zone model in another coastal pesantren facing industrial expansion, to see whether sacred-closed, sacred-semipublic curated, profane-commercial open, and industrial-enclosed zones recur outside Paciran. A third direction is longitudinal: the CSR-exclusion pattern may be a durable expression of autonomy, or it may be an artifact of EJMT's early operational phase. This suggestion would be best done in future research so analysis on that pattern after the 2027 port-upgrading window could be done and showing whether boundary management remains stable once industrial presence becomes more routine after the port is completely upgraded and fully running.

Acknowledgement

This research is supported by the Penelitian Dasar Interdisipliner scheme under the Litapdimas/BOPTN program of the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, administered through the Institute for Research and Community Service (LP2M) of UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya. The author thanks KH. Abdul Ghofur and Pondok Pesantren Sunan Drajat for their willingness to be interviewed during the early fieldwork stage that informs this article.