Patricia Sloane-White

Department of Anthropology

pswhite@udel.edu

Areas of Specialization

Southeast and East Asia; Islam and modernity; capitalism; corporate culture; class and gender.

Courses Taught

Anthropology and Business

Peoples and Cultures of East Asia

Peoples and Cultures of Southeast Asia

Young, Privileged and Global: American and Malaysian Lives (videoconference course co-taught with faculty Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia)

Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology

Asian Women’s Lives

Wives, Mistresses, and Matriarchs: Asian Women’s Lives (Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies Program)

Asian Women in the Global Workplace

Elites: The New Rich in Asia

Immigrant Islam in the West (Study Abroad Paris and London)

MY RESEARCH

After nearly a decade of senior-level business experience on Wall Street, I studied the relationship between Islam and modern capitalism in Malaysia and Indonesia.

I first conducted fieldwork in Malaysia for four years between 1993 and 1995. My initial two-year period of research analyzed Islam and social and economic change in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Malaysia is a powerhouse among Southeast Asian nations for both the success of its capitalist development and the influence of its Islamic worldview.

When I arrived in Malaysia, no anthropologist had yet fully investigated the culture of its emergent Islamic capitalists. The centerpiece of my initial period of research is my book, Islam, Modernity and Entrepreneurship among the Malays, a detailed study of urban Malay Muslim society in the process of capitalist transformation.

In my second period of research in Malaysia, from 1996 to 1998, I focused on the professional, white-collar, urban Malay Muslim middle- and upper-middle-class that has emerged as a consequence of capitalism in Malaysia. The object of this research was to consider the ways in which Muslim people who traditionally share an egalitarian religious ethos experience the new ideas, values, experiences, desires, and subjectivities of global modernity. I have written articles on the nature of middle-class identity and the creation of class difference in urban Malaysia.

My current project, “Corporate Islam,” involves in-depth research on corporate culture and management in Malaysia’s Islamic economy and several Muslim-run corporations. Many Muslim senior executives and CEOs in Malaysia manage their multi-ethnic companies according to Islamic ideas that seek to achieve both harmony and profit. I am studying the use and growth of Islamic principles and precepts in the capitalist workplace, and how these ideals are used to define the nature of modern capitalist power relations and class, ethnic, and gender relations, as well as relations between individuals and institutions.

My work addresses the broad concerns of Malaysia’s Muslim population regarding the nature of their Islamic modernity. It considers how and if Muslim societies can provide significant potential or initiative for an Islam-based corporate culture that promotes tolerance and respect for pluralism within the Muslim community itself as well as other religious and ethnic communities in the nation-state and global setting . . . and examines the on-the-ground dimensions of an economic culture that many Malay Muslim business leaders perceive to be a more balanced and humanitarian form of global capitalism.

My Teaching

I try to engage students in my specialty by demonstrating the relevance of Southeast and East Asia to understanding the nature of social and economic change and conflict in the modern world.

In all of my courses, I teach students that the words and experiences of their daily lives -globalization, modernization, fundamentalism, terrorism, power and inequality, democracy, and even shopping at Wal-Mart - concern ideas and realities that require them to look at Asian societies.

I emphasize that as informed citizens of the modern world, they must know about the traditions, beliefs, and social practices which are embedded in Asian cultures and nations. I am committed to showing students how anthropological knowledge, theory, and methods can help them understand present-day realities—in business, in current events, and in their own lives.

Above all, I see teaching anthropology as a chance to enlarge students’ worldview, and to help them understand some of the cultural, economic, historical, and religious forces that have shaped and will shape the modern world.

For an article on my videoconference course between students at the University of Delaware and students in Malaysia, click here. http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2008/feb/malaysia022808.html

Publications

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“Beyond Islamism at Work: ‘Corporate Islam’ in Malaysia,” in Roy, Olivier and Amel Boubekeur (eds), Whatever Happened to the Islamists? New York: Columbia University Press/Hurst, forthcoming 2009.

“Malaysia at Fifty-one: Resources, Institutions and Networking in Malaysia.” Sloane-White, Patricia and Isabelle Beaulieu. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 30, forthcoming 2009.

“From Sisters to Sinners in One Generation: The Shifting Status of Middle-Class Malay Girlhood.” In Helgren, Jennifer (ed), Girlhood: A Global History. Rutgers University Press, forthcoming 2009.

US and Malaysian Students: Encounters in Modernity.” In Lee, Julian (ed), The Malaysian Way of Life. MarshallCavendish, forthcoming 2009.

“The Hospitable Middle-Class Muslim Home in Urban Malaysia: A Sociable Site for Economic and Political Action,” in Lynch, Paul; Alison J. McIntosh; and Hazel Tucker (eds), Commercial Homes in Tourism: An International Perspective. London: Routledge, 2009.

“The Ethnography of Failure: Middle-Class Malays Producing Capitalism in an ‘Asian Miracle’ Economy.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 39: 455-482, 2008.

“Why Malays Travel: Middle-Class Malay Tourism and the Creation of Social Difference and Belonging.” Crossroads: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 18:2, 2007.

Book

Islam, Modernity, and Entrepreneurship among the Malays. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave/Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.