Measuring the Unmeasurable? Production & Certification of Halal Goods and Services

Abstract

Attending to the rise of halal economy and particularly halal certification initiatives in the region and globally, this paper asks why and how third-party certifiers would gain credibility and authority, and what does authority have to do with the work of entrepreneurs in the sector. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2015, and interviews with entrepreneurs and a private halal certification agency in Kyrgyzstan as well as their accreditors in Kazakhstan, I pay close attention to the collective meaning-making deliberations that revolve around questions of what makes goods and services halal and also what makes one a ‘good Muslim’. Certifiers and entrepreneurs come to form what I call a valuation circuit. In these circuits, they construct shared understandings of ethnical and behavioral norms for market actors, create and reinforce binaries around halal and haram, and rely on transnational network of religious authority as they attempt to valuate and measure compliance to halal standards.