Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University; Cambridge, Massachusetts Kristin Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is currently completing her dissertation, entitled Economic Integration and Cultural Resistance: Islamic Finance in the Arab Gulf. Research for this project took place in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates and has resulted in the publication of a chapter on the political aspects of Islamic banking in Kuwait in the upcoming book The Politics of Islamic Finance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004).