Collaboration across ontological worlds

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the transnational, postcolonial project of creating global social theory by examining how a similar transnational project is being accomplished in Islamic banking and finance. The puzzle it seeks to address is how groups living in saliently different ontological worlds understand one another sufficiently to work together on a common project. In the latter project, investment bankers and Shari’a scholars are co-producing a radical critique of conventional financial instruments and markets while creating a parallel Islamic financial system. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, the chapter demonstrates how they conduct this intellectual brokerage with one another using judgmental rationality within the assumed metaphysical context of ontological realism and epistemic relativism. It is proposed that this style of intellectual brokerage can serve as a model for postcolonial theorists seeking to transcend the Northern ethno-parochialism of social theory. Specifically, it suggests that a philosophical commitment to critical realism, coupled with conventional social science methodology, may provide a stronger methodology for decolonizing global social theory than alternatives such as indigenizing global social science or privileging subaltern perspectives.