Speaker Series: Aaron Pitluck

In the United States and in much of the world, our lives are directly or indirectly dependent on financial markets to access key resources such as an automobile or home, to move money into the future so that we can stop working before we die, and to access fundamental needs such as healthcare and an education. Unfortunately, even highly regulated financial markets are saturated with financial professionals’ exploitation of information and power asymmetries, conflicts of interest, and financial instruments designed with negative externalities. Moreover, many financial markets are lightly regulated and rely on self-regulation. In an aspiringly democratic society, how can outside critics—such as social movements, policy makers, politicians, academics, and even regulators—understand financial markets and instruments sufficiently to morally and normatively evaluate them? Even more challenging, how can outsiders use their hard-won understanding to advocate for and create normatively and morally better forms of finance, particularly when the social change may not be in financial insiders’ short-term interest? To explore questions such as these, Dr. Pitluck will describe his research in global Islamic investment banks in Malaysia to understand how moral critics such as Shariah scholars are engaging with financial expert communities and conducting a deep structural change of financial markets. The presentation will outline how this organizational and institutional structure allows Shariah scholars to induce an understanding of what Islamic finance is and to pragmatically co-produce with investment bankers a movement towards this moral and normative vision.