IslamicFinance.de

UPDATE:
Abstract/Paper Submission
Please note that colleagues should send 1,000 words abstract by FEBRUARY 3, 2017, which should provide a short background, aims of the paper, the methodology and method used, and the findings (or expected findings).

***SASE HAS EXTENDED THE DEADLINE TO 17TH FEBRUARY 2017***

https://www.dur.ac.uk/dcief/events/

Acceptance notifications will be sent by March 1, 2017.

Paper submissions and session proposals must be made through our online submission system; for additional information on how to submit, please follow the link:
https://sase.org/events/conference-submission-and-award-guidelines

Sharing Economy of Islam beyond Islamic Finance:
Re-constructing Collaborative and Disruptive Economy from Islamic Moral Economy Perspective

SASE Conference on ‘What's Next? Disruptive/Collaborative Economy or Business as Usual?’
Universite Claude Bernard, Lyon 1, France
29th June – 1st July 2017
https://sase.org/event/2017-lyon/#mini

Call for Papers:
As part of the Islamic economics movement, Islamic finance as a new and emergent pattern has demonstrated an unprecedented performance in terms of transforming the transactional or financial base of the Muslim societies and beyond, as large number of conventional financial institutions and several non-Muslim countries have engaged with Islamic finance in different levels. In its modern history since 1970s, we have witnessed the emergence of various Islamic financing and financial practices, and, also, Islamic financial and banking institutions along with Islamic social financing institutions such as waqf (pious foundations) and zakah (mandatory alms giving) funds. These include Islamic banks, takaful (Islamic insurance), Islamic microfinance institutions, Islamic crowdfunding platforms, Islamic mutual funds and asset management institutions etc.

As an emergent sector, theoretically Islamic finance practices are shaped by the normative world of Islam culminated and expressed through Islamic moral economy, which esssentialises a morally guided everyday practice of economy and finance in a submerged sense beyond the observed practices of Islamic banking and finance. This submergence or embeddedness in the social formation and normative world of Islam nature of Islamic moral economy implies that also non-economic and non-financial factors determine economic and financial process. The essential principles of Islamic economics and finance within this normative world is ‘risk-sharing’ and ‘profit-and-loss sharing’ along with the prohibition of interest, curbing of speculation and uncertainty, sustainable development, demand reduction and discouraging debt in particular and debt-based system in general in favour of real economy and asset based economy, de-commodification and non-fictitious products along with developing a human-centred development process.
As such normative and operational principles indicate, Islamic finance emerged within the Islamic moral economy frame as a counter hegemony and as part of double-movement to rescue land, labour, capital and human beings from the hegemonic domination. Therefore, sharing economy in the form of risk-sharing and profit-loss-sharing, demand reduction and hence de-commodification and non-fictitious commodities, asset based as opposed to debt-based, and sustainable development remains essential objectives of Islamic moral economy. Furthermore, sharing and distribution is sssestialised through social justice of Islam not only through voluntary action and also through normative and mandatory actions such as zakah (alms) giving. Therefore, in its origin, Islamic moral economy and finance suggests and essentialises sharing and distributive as well as disruptive and collaborative economy beyond contributing to financialisation as the current practice demonstrates.

Due to the prevailing political economy in the world, Islamic financial and banking institutions have emerged as the strong institutions of Islamic economics movements, while social and economic expectations as part of the aspirations of Islamic moral economy have been deferred. Thus, in the last forty years, Islamic financial institutions have flourished and now claims around US$2 trillion asset base, which in itself is a huge success against all the political and economic difficulties. However, the evaluation of the performance of Islamic finance sector shows that Islamic finance has been converging towards conventional financial practices and institutions through the shari’ah compliant practices. While intentionally this process generates compliant practices and respond to the financial needs within financial inclusion sense, there has been emerging tensions in terms of the outcomes of these institutions, as they have been criticized for failing to essentialise and embed the aspirations of Islamic moral economy by incorporating the conventional products and operations. Thus, despite growing interest in Islamic finance after the recent global financial crisis, the Islamic moral economy’s objectives of sharing and collaborative economy have been compromised and Islamic finance has become hybrid instruments of the hegemonic economy geared towards efficiency and profitability at the expense of the identified principles.

The recent trends in economic and financial world, however, identifies disruptive and collaborative economic and business practices as well as sharing and participating economic practices as the emerging practices against the hegemonic business and economic activities in the sense of counter-hegemony, which, as mentioned, are theoretically essentialised by Islamic moral economy. Globally, a new wave of peer-to-peer exchange of goods and services is shaking up established business models. Consumers show strong appetite for sharing homes, boats, cars, etc. at much smaller costs. Some examples of sharing business include Airbnb, CouchSurfing, Uber, Feastly, RelayRides, Hitch, SnapGoods, Poshmark, and Tradesy. While halal economy goes beyond Islamic finance, such sharing economy practices have not either essentialised by halal economy.

Since sharing economy in the form of collaborative and disruptive economy and financial practice is an essential pillar of Islamic moral economy and finance, one may argue that Islamic moral economy and finance contributes significantly to growing new phenomena of global sharing economy. However, we also acknowledge that despite the positive contribution can such economic practices do, one can also argue that sharing economy depletes certain cultural and moral values for the sake of profit motive.
This mini-conference, hence, invites
(i) conceptual and empirical contributions to explore and evaluate the emerging Islamic moral economy and finance practices in relation to the theoretical base in the form of sharing and disruptive and collaborative economy;
(ii) conceptual and empirical papers evaluating and exploring how sharing economy nature (risk-sharing and profit-loss-sharing), demand reduction and hence de-commodification and non-fictitious commodities, asset based, sustainable development in Islamic economics, finance and banking practices as opposed to debt-based conspicuous consumer culture in conventional economics can be developed and modelled within Islamic moral economy and finance;
(iii) conceptual and empirical papers critically examine how sharing economy and financing practices may contribute to growing commodification of values.

Hence, we propose to bring scholars together to discuss both sides of sharing and distributive/collaborative economy practices in the light of ideals and realities of Islamic moral economy and finance within the following themes:

(iv) Conceptualizing and theorising the Islamic Moral Economy within disruptive and collaborative economy
• How the political economy of Islamic moral economy can be developed to suggest a different mode of production as a distinguishing nature of Islamic collaborative and disruptive economy?
• What are the key principles of Islamic economic thought in generating disruptive and collaborative economy?
• Why and how Islamic financial and banking practices have failed to articulate moral economy foundations leading for a sharing economy? In other words, how and why Islamic finance has given up sharing economy within collaborative and disruptive economy in its convergence with the hegemonic economy?
• What strategies can be developed to re-embed Islamic finance for generating a sharing economy?
(v) Collaborative/distributive business from Islamic moral economy perspective: End of market or morality?
• What are theoretical and practical examples of collaborative/distributive business in Islamic moral economy?
• What is the importance of formal and informal institutional values for efficient collaborative business?
• What are the models of collaborative/distributive business in the Muslim societies?
• How can waqf, zakah funds and charity be considered within collaborative/distributive business?
• How can collaborative business as a model affect the waste culture?
• How to evaluate collaborative business in terms of competition and fairness?
• How to evaluate collaborative business in terms of consumer culture and commodification?
(vi) Commodification, consumer culture, and collaborative business: Theory and practice from Islamic moral economy perspective.
• How does Islamic moral economy differ from conventional system in terms of promoting commodification, fictitious products and consumer culture? In other words, what is the distrubtive and collaborative nature of Islamic moral economy?
• What is the trend of commodification in Muslim vs. Western countries?
• How will growing collaborative business practices affect commodification?
(vii) Towards sharing economy through Islamic finance
• What are the risk sharing and profit-and-loss sharing practices in Islamic banks and financial institutions?
• Why and how risk sharing and profit-and-loss sharing practices in Islamic banks and financial institutions are not happening as opposed to aspirational essentalisation?
• What is the state of de-commodification and fictitious commodities practices in Islamic finance? And what is the role of new Islamic financial instruments in essentialising commodification and fictitious commoodities?
• How sustainable development practices can be developed within Islamic moral economy and finance in responding and essentialising SDGs and ESGs?
• What is the practices of Islamic banks and financial institutions for demand/material reduction?
• How has Islamic finance contributed to the expansion of financialisation as opposed to debt-discouragement?
(viii) New institutional forms towards sharing economy in Islamic finance
• How does Islamic social finance affect the expansion of sharing economy?
• What is the role of waqf and zakah fund institutions in essentialising and expanding sharing economy?
• How does Islamic micro-finance, Islamic crowd-funding and Islamic development funds contribute to sharing/collaborative and disruptive economy?
• What is the nature of gift economy in contributing to sharing/collaborative and disruptive economy?
• How can SMEs financing through Islamic social finance, Islamic social banks and funds, Islamic credit units and cooperatives, and other emerging practices and institutions contribute to sharing economy? And how such platforms can be structured and developed?
• How the instruments and institutions/platforms of sharing economy essentialising collaborative and disruptive economy practices can be engineered?
• What is the role of technology in developing such instruments and platforms in Islamic finance universe within Islamic moral economy paradigm?
(ix) Political economy and regulation for the development of sharing economy
• Why has Islamic finance been constructed as commercial bank rather than essentialising sharing economy?
• What are the political economy sources of Islamic finance’s failure in essentialising sharing economy?
• Is financialisation an issue in Islamic finance practice? How and why such practices have been developed and what their impact on the trajectory of development of Islamic finance?
• How regulative environment can help to develop sharing economy in the form of collaborative/distributive business?
• What regulative developments can be considered to develop sustainable development and demand reduction within Islamic finance?
(x) Political and moral economy responses for the development of sharing economy within Islamic moral economy
• How Islamic finance can be reverted to its original promise to generate disruptive and collaborative/sharing economy?
• What actors and institutions can be essential in going back to the original promise of Islamic moral economy in generating a disruptive and collaborative/sharing economy beyond the current practices of Islamic finance?
• What political economy turn is needed to shift to a different modes of production to essentialise sharing and distributive and disruptive and collaborative economy?
• How social justice and distributive nature of Islamic moral economy can be articulated in institutional formation?

Abstract/Paper Submission
Please note that colleagues should send 1,000 words abstract by January 18, 2016, which should provide a short background, aims of the paper, the methodology and method used, and the findings (or expected findings).

The deadline for submitting proposals is February 3, 2017.
Acceptance notifications will be sent by March 1, 2017.

Paper submissions and session proposals must be made through our online submission system; for additional information on how to submit, please follow the link:
https://sase.org/events/conference-submission-and-award-guidelines/

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the corresponding organizers below:

Mehmet Asutay (Corresponding organizer)
Professor in Middle East and Islamic Political Economy and Finance
Director, Durham Centre for Islamic Economics and Finance
Durham University Business School
Durham University, UK
Email: mehmet.asutay@durham.ac.uk

Necati Aydin
Associate Professor of Economics
College of Business, Alfaisal University
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Email: naydin@alfaisal.edu

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Professor Mehmet Asutay
Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Political Economy & Finance
Durham University Business School
Mill Hill Lane
Durham DH1 3LB
UK
*
Director,
Durham Centre for Islamic Economics and Finance
*
Managing Editor
Review of Islamic Economics
*
Honorary Treasurer
BRISMES
&
International Association for Islamic Economics (IAIE)
*
E-mail: mehmet.asutay@durham.ac.uk
Tel: + (0) 191 334 7179
Fax: + (0) 191 334 5201
Web: http://www.durham.ac.uk/dubs