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Dr. Aaron Pitluck

Professor of Sociology
Sociology and Anthropology
Office
Schroeder Hall - SCH 355
Office Hours
To make an appointment: https://tinyurl.com/pitluck-appointment
Or email me: Aaron.Pitluck@IllinoisState.edu
  • About
  • Education
  • Awards & Honors
  • Research

Biography

Member of the International Sociological Association's Executive Committee, the ISA's highest governing body, 2023-2027.

Current Courses

106.001Introduction To Sociology

495.001Special Topics In Sociology

291.008Undergraduate Teaching Experience In Sociology-Antropology

Teaching Interests & Areas

Teaching Interests:
Economic Sociology, Global Development & Economic Change, Introduction to Sociology, Contemporary Social Problems in Global Perspective, Contemporary Social Theory, Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Complex Organizations, Senior Experience (capstone thesis course)

Areas of Specialization:
Economic Sociology. Culture. Global Development & Economic Change. Financial Capitalism. Morals, Markets and Business Ethics. Islamic Banking and Finance. Political Economy. Globalization & Financialization. Malaysia. Focused & Ethnographic Interviews. Cultural and narrative analysis.

Research Interests & Areas

I am an economic sociologist who studies contemporary capitalism from a cultural and postcolonial perspective. Among other topics, my publications have explored professional investor behavior in equity and debt markets, and explored how moral and ethical norms, beliefs, and values are interwoven in markets.

My current research is a book project with the working title, Making Finance Meaningful. This is based on ethnographic research that I've conducted over the past decade in Islamic banks in Malaysia. The book is evolving but currently centered on three questions: What is the meaning of Islamic finance, and how are investment bankers and Shariah scholars co-producing it? What do we learn from their work about how to distinguish empowering from exploitative finance? And how do these work experiences inform us about secular projects to alter the trajectory of finance capitalism? My humble hope is that my readers will uncover new ways to think about, critique, and change contemporary capitalism.

Critiquing finance presupposes understanding. One cannot accurately critique—much less regulate, reform, or replace—something that one does not understand. This truism is particularly perplexing for moral critics of finance, as well as critical social scientists and autonomous regulatory bodies, because there are wide structural asymmetries of knowledge between these outside observers and financial experts. Given the pervasive and growing influence of finance in society, it is important for the public and public intellectuals to be capable of understanding, critiquing, and potentially controlling the finance industry. Over the past decade, I have conducted research in global Islamic investment banks in Malaysia to understand how investment bankers and religious scholars are attempting to bridge the gap between their worldviews and attempt to alter the trajectory of finance.

Previous research in Malaysia has examined how Islamic banking and finance has been guided and promoted by decades of leadership in government, universities, think tanks, and regulatory bodies such as the Central Bank. These accounts are an important explanation that my research draws on and contributes to. However, in contrast to these “top down” explanations, my methodology examines the prosaic and often contentious “bottom up” production of new forms of finance within Islamic investment banks. Complementing earlier research that I have conducted on professional investor behavior in Malaysia’s conventional financial markets, in 2012, 2013, and 2019, I conducted approximately fifty, focused, ethnographic, tape-recorded interviews with investment bankers and Islamic experts in ten investment banks. The interviews focus on my interviewees’ work constructing “sukuk,” a class of financial instrument developed over the past decade as a moral replacement for sovereign and corporate bonds. These banks form the super majority of the domestic sukuk market and half of the international sukuk market. Sukuk are viewed as a crucial element in building a global, transnational, alternative Islamic financial system. The novelty of this research’s “bottom up” methodology is in examining how these diverse parties communicate with one another to critique finance and contentiously coproduce Islamic finance before the innovations are institutionalized by state actors.

Click ‘Research’ above to see select publications in this and other areas.

Ph D Sociology

University of Wisconsin-Madison

M Phil Development Studies

University of Cambridge

Dip Economics

London School of Economics

BA Liberal Arts

New School for Social Research (Eugene Lang College)
New York, NY

Research Fellowship, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study

Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
2022

Most Vocal Professor

Packback Question
2022

RISE to the COVID Challenge Recognition

Office of the Provost
2021

Impact Award 2020

Office of the Provost and University College
2020

Impact Award 2014

Office of the Provost and University College
2014

Research Fellowship

Central European University Foundation
2011

Book, Chapter

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2023. "Collaboration across Ontological Worlds: Reflections on Intellectual Brokerage from Islamic Banking and Finance." Pp. 178-92 in De-Centering Global Sociology: The Peripheral Turn in Social Theory and Research, edited by A. Bueno, M. Teixeira and D. Strecker. New York and London: Routledge.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2020. “Altering the trajectory of finance: Meaning-making and control in Malaysian Islamic investment banks” in Financialization: Relational Approaches, edited by Chris Hann and Don Kalb (pp.111-135). New York and Oxford: Berghahn.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2020. “Intellectual brokerage in economic theology: Methodological and theoretical reflections from Islamic banking and finance” in The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology, edited by Stefan Schwarzkopf (pp.379-90). London: Routledge.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. and Shikshya Adhikari. 2018. "Islamic Finance in the Global North: Secular Incubators, Elementary Accommodation and Strategic Negligence." Pp. 28 in Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives, edited by M. Woodward and R. Lukens-Bull: Springer Reference.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2016. "The Convergence Paradox of Islamic Finance: A Sociological Reinterpretation, with Insights for Proponents of Social Finance." Pp. 364-80 in Routledge Handbook of Social and Sustainable Finance, edited by O. Lehner. Basingstoke: Routledge.

Book, Edited

Special Issue: Financialization. Guest Editors: Aaron Z. Pitluck, Fabio Mattioli, and Daniel Souleles. Economic Anthropology 5(2):157-285.

Journal Article

Pitluck, Aaron Z. (2023) "The interpretive and relational work of financial innovation: A resemblance of assurance in Islamic finance," Journal of Cultural Economy 16(6):793-811. Open Access.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2022. “Beyond debt and equity: Dissecting the red herring and a path forward for normative critiques of finance,” Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 93 (2022): 60-74. Open Access.

Stoltz, Dustin S. and Aaron Z. Pitluck. 2021. “Resources in Relational Packages: Social Capital as a Byproduct of Relational Work,” Social Currents 8(6):549-565.

Pitluck, Aaron Z., Fabio Mattioli and Daniel Souleles. 2018. "Finance Beyond Function: Three Causal Explanations for Financialization." Economic Anthropology 5(2):157-71.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2016. "How to Embrace Performativity While Avoiding the Rabbit Hole." Journal of Cultural Economy 9(3):296-303.

Newsletter

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2009. “Ethnography Meets Econometrics: Exploring Daily Work Practices that Lead to Financial Crises,” Anthropology News, October 2009, pp.7-8.

Presentations

Conflicts of interest as social structure. XX World Congress of Sociology. International Sociological Association. (2023)

Economic Sociology of Innovation International Workshop, “Problematizing Moral Views of Financial Innovation,” Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 16-18 February, 2023.

Presenter and Participant, Economics and Human Natures International Workshop, Lorentz Center, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, 27-31 March 2023.

34th Annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), “Beyond debt and equity: Dissecting the red herring and a path forward for normative critiques of finance,” University of Amsterdam, July 10, 2022.

38th Colloquium of the European Group of Organizational Studies, “What drives financial innovation? A Case Study in an Islamic Bank,” Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, July 7, 2022.

Intersections of Finance & Society Conference, “Relational Politics in Financial Innovation: A Case Study of an Islamic Bank,” City, University of London, September 15, 2022.

Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study Seminar, “A Resemblance of Risk,” Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 28, 2022.

IV ISA Forum of Sociology, “Collaboration across ontological worlds: Reflections on intellectual brokerage from Islamic banking and finance,” online in Porto Alegre, Brazil, February 24, 2021.

IV ISA Forum of Sociology, “Contesting finance: What development theorists can learn from Malaysian Islamic investment banks,” online in Porto Alegre, Brazil, February 23, 2021.

Universitas Brawijaya, “An Economic Sociology of Islamic Banking and Finance.” Visiting Professor for an Economic Sociology class, online in Malang, Indonesia, November 2, 2021.

Grants & Contracts

Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other. (2022)
Making finance meaningful. University Research Grant. Illinois State University. (2022)
Contesting Finance. University Research Grant. Illinois State University. (2019)