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This compelling account offers a unique insight into the modern Islamic corporation.
Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. This realization has led to cries for change—yet there is little popular awareness of possible alternatives. Beyond Debt describes efforts to create a transnational economy free of debt. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia, Daromir Rudnyckyj illustrates how the state, led by the central bank, seeks to make the country’s capital Kuala Lumpur “the New York of the Muslim world”—the central node of global financial activity conducted in accordance with Islam. Rudnyckyj shows how Islamic financial experts have undertaken ambitious experiments to create more stable econ...
Houses in Motion: The Experience of Place and the Problem of Belief in Urban Malaysia is about the transformation of urban space and the reordering of the demographic character of Brickfields, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Kuala Lumpur. Baxstrom offers an ethnographic account of the complex attempts on the part of the state and the community to reconcile techno-rational conceptions of law, development, and city planning with local experiences of place, justice, relatedness, and possibilities for belief in an aggressively changing world. The book combines classic methods of anthropological research and an engagement with the work of theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Henri Lefebvre, and moves beyond previous studies of Southeast Asian cities by linking larger conceptual issues of ethics, belief, and experience to the concrete trajectories of everyday urban life in the region.
In this important scholarly study, Patricia Sloane surveys the history of theories about color and challenges readers--students and instructors of art and art history, artists and designers, and those concerned with color in other fields such as science, philosophy, and industry--to rethink their beliefs about color from the simplest level. Suggesting that the ways in which color has been viewed since the nineteenth century are, at best, inomplete, she discusses Color and Language, Color and Light, Color and Form, Color and Culture, Color and Theory. Sloane asks: are the concepts of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors significant? Are color harmony and complementarity meaningful notions? How is our perception of color limited by the words we use to describe it? What is the relationship between color and light? Between color and form? Between color and vision? --book jacket.
Girlhood, interdisciplinary and global in source, scope, and methodology, examines the centrality of girlhood in shaping women's lives. Scholars study how age and gender, along with a multitude of other identities, work together to influence the historical experience. Spanning a broad time frame from 1750 to the present, essays illuminate the various continuities and differences in girls' lives across culture and region--girls on all continents except Antarctica are represented. Case studies and essays are arranged thematically to encourage comparisons between girls' experiences in diverse locales, and to assess how girls were affected by historical developments such as colonialism, political repression, war, modernization, shifts in labor markets, migrations, and the rise of consumer culture.
This book is an ethnographic study of Malay Muslim enterprise and entrepreneurial culture among the newly rich beneficiaries of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in Malaysia, a government program of affirmative action intended to develop the indigenous Malay population in an ethnically polarized nation. Focusing on social class, ethnicity, gender, domestic arrangements, networks, and the dramatic impact of government policy on economic development, this is the first in-depth study of urban, affluent Malay culture in the process of transformation as a consequence of state-led, pro-Malay capitalist intensification and Islamic resurgence. Arguing that Islamic morality and economic ambition have emerged as the key factors in the construction of Malay modern identity, Sloane examines the role of religion and culture in establishing new roles of capitalist leadership. She uses her own experience on Wall Street to develop her analytic understanding of modern business and capitalism in Malaysia.
With critical reference to Eisenstadt’s theory of "multiple modernities," Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity discusses the role of religion in the modern world. The case studies all provide examples illustrating the ambition to understand how Islamic traditions have contributed to the construction of practices and expressions of modern Muslim selfhoods. In doing so, they underpin Eisenstadt’s argument that religious traditions can play a pivotal role in the construction of historically different interpretations of modernity. At the same time, however, they point to a void in Eisenstadt’s approach that does not problematize the multiplicity of forms in which this role of religious traditions plays out historically. Consequently, the authors of the present volume focus on the multiple modernities within Islam, which Eisenstadt’s theory hardly takes into account. Contributors are: Philipp Bruckmayr, Neslihan Kevser Cevik, Dietrich Jung, Jakob Krais, Mex-Jørgensen, Kamaludeen Nasir, Zacharias Pieri, Mark Sedgwick, Kirstine Sinclair, Fabio Vicini, and Ahmed al-Zalaf.
A biography of the novelist who created Tom Ripley that is “both dazzling and definitive . . . as original as its contemptible, miserable, irresistible subject” (Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book * A Lambda Literary Award Winner * An Edgar Award Nominee * An Agatha Award Nominee * A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her famed “hero-criminal,” the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcock’s filming of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, to her long, strange self-exile in Euro...
Bringing together a group of both international and Malaysian scholars, this book offers an up-to-date and broad analysis of the contemporary state of Malaysian politics and society. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, it offers a look at Malaysian politics not only through the lens of political science but also anthropology, cultural studies, international relations, political economy and legal studies touching on both overlooked topics in Malaysian political life as well as the emerging trends which will shape Malaysia's future. Covering silat martial arts, Malaysia's constitutional identity, emergency legislation, the South China Sea dilemma, ISIS discourse, zakat payment, the fallout from the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia's green movement, Illusions of Democracy charts the complex and multi-faceted nature of political life in a semi-authoritarian state, breaking down the illusions which keep it functioning, to uncover the mechanisms which really underlie the paradoxical longevity of Malaysia's political, economic and social system.
The latest novel in bestselling author Andrea Penrose’s popular Regency-set Wrexford & Sloane historical mystery series is a brilliant blend of intrigue and romance, complete with the excitement of an upcoming wedding—and the inconvenience of a murder. Perfect for fans of Amanda Quick, Tasha Alexander, and Deanna Raybourn. One advantage of being caught up in a whirl of dress fittings and decisions about flower arrangements and breakfast menus is that Charlotte Sloane has little time for any pre-wedding qualms. Her love for Wrexford isn’t in question. But will being a wife—and a Countess—make it difficult for her to maintain her independence—not to mention, her secret identity as ...