Subjects of Debt: Financial Subjectification and Collaborative Risk in Malaysian Islamic Finance

Abstract

This article argues the Malaysian state has developed Islamic finance in conjunction with two distinct strategies of subject formation. In its first phase, in the 1980s, a central objective was the financial inclusion of Malays. Islamic finance was part of an identity-building project and intended to integrate this disadvantaged indigenous majority into the national economy. By the 2000s the state had succeeded in fostering a Malay Muslim middle class through aggressive affirmative action policies. Currently, Islamic finance is being redeployed as a technique for the neoliberal entrepreneurialization of the Malay Muslim population. Empirically, this shift is evident in efforts by experts to move Islamic finance away from a reliance on what they call "debt-based" devices to ones referred to as "equity based." This entails substituting devices that reformers contend replicate the credit and lending instruments characteristic of "conventional finance" with instruments instead premised on investment, partnership, and risk sharing that they argue more faithfully adhere to the discursive tradition of Islam. [Islam, development, neoliberalism, Islamic finance, debt] ABSTRAK Artikel ini bertujuan untuk membincangkan perihal negeri Malaysia yang telah membangunkan kewangan Islam seiring dengan dua strategi berbeza dalam pembentukan subjek tersebut. Dalam fasa pertama yang berlangsung sekitar tahun 1980-an, objektif utama adalah kemasukan masyarakat Melayu dalam bidang kewangan.Kewangan Islam adalah sebahagian daripada projek pembangunan identiti yang bertujuan untuk mengintegrasikan majoriti daripada kelompok bumiputera yang kurang bernasib baik dalam ekonomi negara. Menjelang tahun 2000-an, negeri ini telah berjaya mengangkat kelas pertengahan Muslim Melayu asli melalui dasar-dasar tindakan afirmatif yang agresif. Pada masa ini, kewangan Islam diatur semula sebagai teknik untuk pengusahawanan neo-liberal masyarakat Melayu Islam. Secara empirik, peralihan ini amat ketara dalam usaha para pakar untuk mengggerakkan

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