Calder, Ryan

(Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley) Ryan Calder is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation, entitled Sacred profit: A sociology of Islamic finance, will be completed in 2014. Based on 18 months of interviews and ethnography primarily in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and London, it traces how the evolving concept of shari‘a-compliance has supported the growth of Islamic finance. It argues that shari‘a scholars, Islamic bankers, lawyers, and regulators not only verify shari‘a-compliance, but define and construct it as the ethical basis of an industry and of a new mode of financial being. Calder also conducted interviews during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, publishing extensively online from Libya in The Atlantic and Foreign Policy. Formerly a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Calder has a B.A. magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard (Inner Asian and Altaic Studies) and an M.A. (Sociology) from Berkeley. He speaks Japanese, French, and Arabic.