Search Results

This chapter articulates the two central questions of the book: 1) what makes Islamic finance Islamic, and 2) what kind of alternative does Islamic finance present to conventional finance. It situates the work in relation to anthropology, the social studies of finance, and work within Islamic economics and finance. The book develops a new line of analysis in economic anthropology: rather than presuming a necessary opposition between society and economy, it seeks to show how new forms of subjectivity and sociality are produced through economic action. Further, the chapter argues that Islamic finance offers both a diagnosis and solution to the problems created by debt. The chapter also describes how the book departs from work that seeks to evaluate the authenticity and distinctiveness of Islamic finance by arguing that this question was itself the object of reflection among Islamic finance experts. The chapter also introduces the concept of the "Islamic global city."

This chapter focuses on two of the key functions of a health sector financing system: revenue collection and fund pooling. It uses as its starting point the World Health Organization resolution calling for health care financing systems to provide universal coverage and financial protection for citizens. Revenue collection concerns the sources of funds, contribution structures, and the means by which they are collected, while fund pooling addresses the need to spread the risk of incurring unexpected health care costs over as broad a population group as possible. In terms of revenue collection, the chapter reviews the equity, sustainability, and feasibility of alternative financing mechanisms (e.g., donor and tax funding, a range of health insurance mechanisms, and out-of-pocket payments) and highlights key lessons from recent research in low- and middle-income countries on these mechanisms. It also highlights the importance of carefully considering who the most appropriate revenue collection organization may be in different political contexts. The main focus of the section on fund pooling is on alternative strategies for reducing fragmentation in health care financing in order to maximize both income and risk cross-subsidies in the overall health care financing system. Such cross subsidies are critical to achieving universal coverage and adequate financial protection.

This chapter addresses the question of what kind of alternative Islamic finance offers to its conventional counterpart. The chapter compares what experts called "debt based" Islamic finance with the version they referred to as "equity based." It argues that equity-based Islamic finance, which entails investment and profit- and risk-sharing, offered a distinct alternative to conventional finance because it put inherent limits on leveraging. The chapter documents how officials at Malaysia's Central Bank sought to encourage risk- and profit-sharing contracts and some of the technical problems experts had to overcome as they sought to replace debt-based devices with those based on equity instead.

This chapter argues that Malaysia's Islamic finance project seeks to create a new geoeconomics by remaking the map of global finance. In decentering the global financial system from its focus on New York, London, and Hong Kong, planners and experts in Malaysia seek to position Kuala Lumpur between the world's greatest source of surplus capital (the Arabian peninsula's petroleum wealth) and its foremost site of industrial production (East Asia). The chapter shows how efforts to reform the practices of Islamic finance in Malaysia to make it more appealing to Arabs is a key means by which planners and experts plan to achieve this ambitious goal. The chapter argues that the value of anthropological study of phenomena such as Islamic finance is to make the familiar strange and show how alternative approaches and practices outside the West may hold possible answers to some of the West's most pressing problems. The chapter concludes that Islamic finance is a practical anthropology insofar as it demands that we question the unstated assumptions of our financial organization.

This chapter chronicles the development of China's financial system and compares it with those of other countries. Four main conclusions are drawn about the financial system and its future development. First, the large banking sector dominated by state-owned banks has played a bigger role in funding the growth of many types of firms than financial markets. Second, the stock market has been growing fast since 1990, but has played a relatively limited role in supporting economic growth. Third, alternative financing channels have had great success in supporting the growth of the Hybrid Sector, which contributes most of the economic growth compared to the State and Listed Sectors. Finally, a significant challenge for China's financial system is to avoid damaging financial crises that can severely disrupt the economy and social stability. A commentary is included at the end of the chapter.