Daromir Rudnyckyj


Daromir Rudnyckyj is Associate Professor and Honours Adviser

in the Anthropology Department at the University of Victoria. He wrote Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance (U of Chicago 2019) $25 978-0-22655-208-8.

His bio entry reads: Currently, I am pursuing this line of inquiry by focusing on efforts to make Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, “the New York of the Muslim world”: the central hub in a transnational network of Islamic finance. Islamic finance, which seeks to enable the circulation of capital while adhering to religious prohibitions against interest and speculation, is growing rapidly in many parts of the world. My research entails an ethnographic investigation of ambitious plans in Malaysia to develop the infrastructure necessary to facilitate a transnationally viable Islamic financial system. My fieldwork consists of observation of and participation with shariah scholars, Islamic finance professionals, banking regulators, and Islamic economists. In the context of recent financial crises in many parts of the world, I am analyzing the debates regarding the creation of an Islamic financial system that offers a “real” alternative to conventional finance, which is based in large part on interest-bearing debt.

[BCBW 2019]