Despite its relatively small market, Malaysia has emerged as the center of the global Islamic financial economy. This presentation had two objectives. First, it examined Malaysia’s emergence in Islamic finance in terms of its frontier positioning between the knowledge systems of the West and Middle East. Distance from the Middle East as well as from the United States and Europe confers a locational advantage that facilitates the mediation of financial knowledge between transcultural communities. Second, mediation has been accompanied by a project of juridical market-making. This project focused on the thickening of institutions that collateralize Shariah risks and the reordering of market norms and values. The above themes are examined based on data drawn from three years of fieldwork comprising both surveys and interviews with executives of Islamic financial institutions, government officials and Shariah scholars. This event was co-hosted with the Department of Geography and Environment.
This event was recorded and the video can be watched here.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Jessie P.H. Poon is Professor of Geography at the University of Buffalo (SUNY). She is an economic geographer with research interests in international trade, finance and regional development in Asia. Her recent publications focus on the energy security and trade, renewable energy investment, and financial surveillance of trade. She also coauthored a book recently on misinformation that examines the spatiality of economic and scientific misinformation. She is co-editor of Environment and Planning A and is an editorial board member of several journals. She is co-chair of the US Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Study Centers Consortium. She just completed her term as Chair of the Regional Studies Association.
Prof Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE. Prof Shin’s research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and China. Prof Shin has published widely in major international journals and contributed to numerous books on the above themes. His most recent books include Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (2021, Routledge); Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: An Insight into a Post-Pandemic World (LSE Press, 2022); The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (forthcoming, Routledge).