Islam and the Spirits of Capitalism: Competing Articulations of the Islamic Economy

• In Event: 3183 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 11. Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Why has Islamic socio-economic development gained traction as an alternative to already established neoliberal models? The existing literature suggests that the Islamic economy was popularized by a combination of factors, including anti-colonialism, a global renewal of religiosity, and the activity of new social strata who merged piety with capitalist orientations. These approaches, however, tend to homogenize social actors’ divergent and often competing orientations toward, and practices of, Islam in the market. This article applies sub-national field-level analysis to compare three competing factions of market actors in post-Soviet Central Asia, who articulate distinct orientations toward the Islamic economy. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, I argue that it is this contestation that enrolls broader sets of actors in these countries to the Islamic economy, rather than any single state-driven or movement-based identity project. As such, the paper synthesizes three otherwise isolated bodies of work: the political sociology of articulation, new theories of Islamism, and the concept of imagined futures from economic sociology.

Author

• Aisalkyn Botoeva, Brown University