Commodity or Token?: A Para-anthropological Analysis of Money in Islamic Finance
| dc.contributor.author | Sayeed, Rehan | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-05-03T16:13:43Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-05-03T16:13:43Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2019 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2019-05-03 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Money, in conventional scholarship, is represented as a commodity or a token. In a conventional economy, most money is created through bank loans based on interest-bearing debt. However, Islam prohibits the payment of interest (riba). This brings forth a challenge for the Islamic financial system: if interest-bearing debt (riba) is prohibited in Islam and that most money in modern economies is created through extending credit, how is money created in Islamic finance? Considering, the dual nature of money as both material (as a commodity) and representation (as a token), this essay examines the nature of money in Islam through the way money creation has been theorized in Islamic finance. There are two primary schools of thought: dinarism and tokenism. The former resembles commodity theorists and the latter resemble tokenists. In this paper, I reflect on the discourse around money’s materiality and abstract symbolism in Islamic finance and analyze its potential in terms of furthering the debates within the anthropology of money. Moreover, I describe how the semiotic nature of money is problematized in Islamic finance. Even though critics of Islamic finance have argued against its ‘Islamicity’ as they find it operationally no different than conventional finance, the prohibition of interest central to Islamic finance offers an unexplored alternative that abates the inimical cycle of perpetual debt rooted in the capitalist economy. | en_US |
| dc.description.reviewstatus | Reviewed | en_US |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Undergraduate | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/10851 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject | Islamic finance | en_US |
| dc.subject | para-anthropology | en_US |
| dc.subject | semiosis | en_US |
| dc.subject | money creation | en_US |
| dc.subject | equity | en_US |
| dc.subject | PCNs | en_US |
| dc.subject | commodity | en_US |
| dc.subject | token | en_US |
| dc.title | Commodity or Token?: A Para-anthropological Analysis of Money in Islamic Finance | en_US |
| dc.type | Honours thesis | en_US |