Since the 2014 presidential election, Indonesian political landscape has increasingly been characterised as a battleground for competing identity politics. In particular Islam has become the most prominent marker of popular collective identity, driving a wedge between the muslim and non-muslim electorate in the process. Many scholars and observers quickly jumped to the conclusion that identity is indeed an important category to explain Indonesian politics. In doing so, they risk ignoring a long standing source of division in Indonesian society, i.e. material inequality that is often expressed in class terms. By examining existing literature on Indonesian democracy, this paper seeks to consider the arguments for identity politics as opposed to those that are based on class. How useful is identity in explaining current Indonesian politics? What are the conditions under which non-material interests have explanatory power? How would the emphasis on identity address the weaknesses of class-based explanations? This research will contribute to the ongoing debate about the academic merit of non-material interests in explaining the struggle for power and resources. Anthropology is often understood as a discipline whose main interest is to study the social and cultural rather than the structural and economic. This research will help address the gaps often left out by the more structural approaches within the social sciences and vice versa.