Corporate Islam
Corporate Islam
Compelling and original, this book offers a unique insight into the modern Islamic corporation, revealing how power, relationships, individual identities, gender roles, and practices - and often massive financial resources - are mobilized on behalf of Islam. Focusing on Muslims in Malaysia, Patricia Sloane-White argues that sharia principles in the region's Islamic economy produce a version of Islam that is increasingly conservative, financially and fiscally powerful, and committed to social control over Muslim and non-Muslim public and private lives. Packed with fascinating details, the book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Islamic politics and culture in modern life.
- Provides unprecedented access to the inner workings of major corporations run by leading Muslim business executives
- Presents insights into managerial policies and experiences rarely seen in Muslim settings through a behind-the-scene look at the day-to-day workplace practices of corporate personnel
- Insights into religious practices in a modern corporate economy are presented in their most modern guise
- Explores and presents the philanthropic and charitable giving practices that fund Islamic activities, offering a new look at 'corporate social responsibility' which allows readers to develop an understanding of how money is mobilized in corporate life for advancing the cause of Islam and Islamization
Reviews & endorsements
'This volume contributes a fine-grained ethnographic analysis of the corporation as a key site of Islamic moral production in late capitalism. Tracing the 'trajectory and emplacement' of sharia in the modern Malaysian corporate workplace, Sloane-White provides an engrossing account of the spaces of work wherein both subjectivities and livelihoods are made and remade.' Laura Elder, Anthropology of Work Review
'This is a gem of a book, meticulously researched and incisively analyzed by the author, of a social site not usually accessible to scholars and ethnographers of Islam. The sometimes mundane but most times powerful life-changing workplace is easily missed as a site which informs the turns and tides of potent religious movements. The over-reliance on politics in explaining religious dynamics has led to another crucial location of 'religion making' being overlooked, a 'third space' that is neither 'fully 'public' nor in any way 'private'', according to the author … It is in addressing this gap that Corporate Islam makes its mark. … All eight chapters are riveting, each bringing out the various dimensions of a flourishing Islamic corporate sphere.' Maznah Mohamad, Pacific Affairs
'Corporate Islam is a much-needed text on the contemporary engagement of economy with sharia and its demands and outcomes for both producers and consumers in the economy. The ethnography, which is rich and authoritative, highlights the distinctiveness of the Malaysian case … and it is sure to influence future scholars in the field for many years to come.' Sarah A. Tobin, Islamic Law and Society
Product details
November 2018Paperback
9781316635452
248 pages
229 × 157 × 14 mm
0.3kg
2 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Corporate Islam
- 2. The scholar-elites of sharia: men of the mosque and the market
- 3. The corporate elites of sharia
- 4. Sharia divisions of labor: khalifah and God's 'human resources'
- 5. How divisions of labor are gendered: sharia, women, and the priviliges of men
- 6. Zakat and its transformations: a pillar of corporate Islam
- 7. Islamic corporate social responsibility and the 'public good'
- 8. Corporate lives, sharia, and the 'small Islamic state'.
