Christopher Taylor Awarded Harold K. Schneider Prize
Christopher Taylor Awarded Economic Anthropology Prize for Best Graduate Paper
Christopher Taylor, Ph.D. (Anthropology) BU GRS 2015, was awarded the Harold K. Schneider Graduate Paper Prize from the Society for Economic Anthropology for his paper “New Islamic Charities in North India: Re-Visiting Islam’s ‘Moral Economy.’ ” Robert W. Hefner was honored as Taylor’s Faculty Sponsor.
Taylor’s paper is part of his Ph.D. dissertation project, “Islamic Charity in India: Ethical Entrepreneurism & the Ritual, Revival, and Reform of Zakat Among a Muslim Minority.” His dissertation explores the rise and transformation of contemporary Islamic charity.
In the paper, Taylor argues that the practice of Islamic charity in India today reveals contradictions that invite us to reconsider our ideas of philanthropy and the relationship between the economy and Islam. Drawing on his year and a half of work on new Islamic charities, Taylor illustrates how Muslim reformers seek to re-orient India’s Muslims toward the perceived requirements of capitalist markets. Morality is often imagined to be at odds with capitalism, yet these “ethical entrepreneurs” promote development as simultaneously economic and moral. Taylor will present his winning paper at the Society for Economic Anthropology annual meeting in Athens, Georgia in 2016.
Dr. Taylor is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies and instructor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at George Mason University. Dr. Taylor was also a graduate research fellow of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a Dissertation Fellow of the Lake School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.