Legal Framework, Contested Practiced and Authenticity in Islamic Banking and Organic Agriculture
Organic agriculture and Islamic banking propose a change in the process of agriculture and banking respectively for the sake of common good. Organic agriculture is concerned with establishing agricultural practices that is good for human, animal and environmental health. Its proponents emphasize rules and cycles in Nature as a model for better agricultural practices. Islamic banking is involved in creating interest-free financial transactions that conform to Islamic rule of prohibition of interest that is also claimed to be a better practice for social and economic viability.
In this paper, I ask, how do general and abstract sets of governing rules inform specific and concrete practices? In particular, how do discussions of religion and nature figure in the techniques of banking and agriculture respectively? The conversations regarding Islamic law as informing the practices of Islamic banking always extend to discussions of Islamic law itself and spill over to discussions on society and human being. Similarly, the discussions of society and human being are in tandem with the discussions of practices in organic agriculture and references to how nature works.
I use a qualitative comparative case study and adopt a grounded, interpretive approach for analysis of archival data (newspaper articles, bank, NGO and government documents) and interview data (producers, NGO leaders, Islamic law scholars). Archival data provided me with initial understanding of events, people, and debates in each industry. The interviews with key people provided the foundation of the analysis to induce themes and relationships.
My research has revealed, two distinct understandings of Islamic banking and also of organic agriculture in relation to an incumbent system manifest itself in the main debates within and around each industry. Incumbent system in both accounts refers to conventional banking or agriculture as well as capitalism, industrialization, secularism or modernization, depending on the arguments being made. In the first kind of accounts, Islamic banking or organic agriculture is complementary, filling a gap within the system, or serving the needs of previously excluded people on the grounds of their beliefs or preferences. In the second kind of accounts, Islamic banking or organic agriculture is alternative and in opposition to the larger system itself; it is about establishing a social order based on solidarity and justice.
In each industry, two variants of ‘alternative’ with respect to the incumbent system do not only co-exist as distinct conceptualizations but are in relation with each other through continuing debates over what is ‘ideal’, influencing the practices and the law and regulations along the way. Actors while interacting with each other may emphasize one variant of alternative over the other but they also use arguments from both imageries expanding and elaborating the content of each account over time. This expansion and elaboration is especially salient in conversations around the ideal models as depicted in Islamic law or rules and models in Nature. In both accounts, the discussions of practices, formal definitions, the system, the ideal, and the sources of that ideal are enmeshed and carried out with the assessments and criterions of ideal in relation to, explicitly but not exclusively, rules of the Divine or Nature.
My findings point to the centrality of the question ‘What is ideal?’ for the people involved in these two industries. Extant literature contends that institutional entrepreneurs or activists engage in sense-giving efforts to define new organizational forms (Negro, Koçak and Hsu, 2010; Vergne and Wry, 2014). They answer the question ‘What is …?’ for microbrewery (Carroll and Swaminathan, 2000), satellite radio (Navis and Glynn, 2010), grass-fed meat and dairy (Weber, Heinze and DeSoucey, 2008) by listing various features of the new organizational form, its products and practices, often in order to highlight its difference from incumbent forms. I find that the ‘What is the ideal …?’ question is even more central in Islamic banking and organic agriculture. The discussions in both industries are simultaneously about the meaning of Islamic banking or organic agriculture and the validity of those meanings and practices in relation to specifically but not exclusively Islamic law or the rules of Nature. In other words, actors in both cases were not only involved in meaning construction (discussions around product features, labels and purposes) but also were deliberately discussing the authenticity, that is the realness or genuineness, of the practices, as well as the criterions to be used in authenticity assessments. The main concern in these accounts was not differentiation from opposed models as current literature generally suggests (e.g. Carroll and Swaminathan, 2000; Weber et al., 2008) but being aligned with sacralized forms and purposes. This finding suggests that when industries are grounded on explicit moral foundations, the question of validity of those morals reflected in both symbolic and material domain may be an important part of collective construction of the form.
References:
Carroll, G. R., & Swaminathan, A. (2000). Why the Microbrewery Movement? Organizational Dynamics of Resource Partitioning in the US Brewing Industry1. AJS, 106(3), 715-762.
Navis, C., & Glynn, M. A. (2010). How new market categories emerge: Temporal dynamics of legitimacy, identity, and entrepreneurship in satellite radio, 1990–2005. ASQ, 55(3), 439-471.
Negro, G., Koçak, Ö., & Hsu, G. (2010). Research on categories in the sociology of organizations. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 31, 3-35.
Vergne, J. P., & Wry, T. (2014). Categorizing categorization research: Review, integration, and future directions. JMS, 51(1), 56-94.
Weber, K., Heinze, K. L., & DeSoucey, M. (2008). Forage for thought: Mobilizing codes in the movement for grass-fed meat and dairy products. ASQ, 53(3), 529-567.