Capturing the transition: ethnographic critiques of sustainable finance and impact investing

American Anthropological Association We have a couple of open spaces on our panel on sustainable finance and impact investing - please get in touch by Friday with a title and abstract (max 250 words). Capturing the transition: ethnographic critiques of sustainable finance and impact investing Capitalism has been widely blamed for both the global environmental crisis and widening social and economic inequality, yet the belief that capital can be harnessed to provide innovative solutions remains established in political and business circles, where, instead of the invisible hand of the market, the ‘visible hand’ of innovative finance is invoked in the name of the common good. Cross-sectoral partnerships increasingly use capital markets to pursue social and environmental goals, in line with an intergovernmental mandate for promoting socially inclusive green growth. If the exploitation of finite natural resources and human labour gave rise to the present predicament, the narrative goes, then the financial sector should stimulate socially and environmentally responsible enterprise to offer ways out of it. As growing numbers of successful investors and business consultants claim to have experienced ‘awakenings’ to the possibilities of investing in public, social and environmental goods, leading business schools worldwide have launched impact investment programmes, and top business school graduates are aspiring to work in the growing ‘impact’ sector. Underscoring this moral turn in finance (Dal Maso, Tripathy and Brightman 2022), religious organizations are openly promoting impact investing, especially since religious leaders have begun to extend their moral concerns to ecological problems. The business-friendly, socially and ecologically progressive moral thrust of ‘sustainable’ finance appears broadly in line with a liberal mainstream challenged by multiple social movements. Yet it is also an expression of the emerging network economy, of South-South collaboration, and of devolved, decentralized approaches to change. Experts in global social and economic inequality and in environmental studies argue that radical political and material changes are necessary for a global transition to sustainability, such as degrowth, community energy production and the fostering of social and biological diversity. Impact and ‘responsible’ investing have emerged out of an overwhelming recognition of the unsustainability of today’s global economic system, but are only partially or superficially aligned with other social and ecological movements. Are they merely opening new frontiers for financialization and deepening the political crisis of the developed world, or can some of their iterations support radical transitions? We invite papers that explore the human dimensions of sustainable finance and impact investment across the spectrum of relationships between risk and ethical action, and more-than-human ecologies, thus approaching financial instruments as devices for ordering and re-ordering the world. We are interested in establishing a basic picture of the role of private financial capital in addressing social and environmental problems on multiple scales, and in exploring the theoretical problems that it raises. · Which different actors are brought together through impact bonds and what kind of relationships do bonds produce between them? · How are different actors’ visions of sustainability encoded and enacted through financial instruments? · To what extent is finance amenable to contributing towards social and environmental sustainability? Themes may include (but are not limited to) ecological and financial temporalities, ethics and responsibility, critical accounting and accountability, indicator literacy, value, political ecology, the anthropology of the ‘good’, elite capture, climate and environmental justice, multispecies, decolonial, feminist and queer ecologies. Marc Brightman Professor of Anthropology University of Bologna Department of Cultural Heritage Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability A Moral Turn in Finance Mediterranean Migrant Hospitality The Hau of Finance https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/marcandrew.brightman/ ************** This is an official listserv of the Anthropology & Environment Society of the American Anthropological Association. It is restricted to posting announcements and news items related to ecological and environmental anthropology only. Responses to or comments on announcements and news are not allowed. For open discussion on topics related to ecological and environmental anthropology, please subscribe to our discussion list: EANTHDISCUSS-L@lists.ufl.edu To unsubscribe from this listserv, send an email to listserv@listserv.uga.edu with SIGNOFF EANTH-L in the body of the message. For more information visit our website at http://www.eanth.org