The Influence of Financial Capitalism on the Social World
On 10–12 September a conference entitled “Financialisation Beyond Crisis: Connections, Contradictions, Contestations” will take place at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. It will examine how global financial capitalism influences not only international politics and economy but also nearly every aspect of people’s lives. The conference was organised by Prof. Dr. Chris Hann and Prof. Dr. Don Kalb together with the research group ‘Financialisation’ in the Department ‘Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia’ at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. The conference will be held in English.
Powerful financial markets, endangered livelihoods
Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis, the global financial economy remains as powerful as ever. Supranational organisations, individual states, banks, corporations, and even private households are increasingly subject to the influence of international financial capitalism. This process, which started in the 1970s and was further stimulated by the liberalisation of the financial sector by Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, is often referred to by scholars as “financialisation”, meaning that actors in the financial sector such as banks and credit institutions no longer restrict their activities to their role as privately organized public utilities but have become speculative market-makers themselves. In this way they are able to influence politics and the economy to a previously unheard-of extent. “But there is also increasing resistance to this influence,” notes Prof. Chris Hann, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, “for it has been one of the main causes of numerous international crises and it is thereby endangering the livelihoods of many people to a considerable degree.”
Transformation of natural resources into financial products
Drawing on anthropological field studies, the conference participants will explore the many ways that the lives of people around the world are affected by the logic and dynamics of financialisation. For example, Dr. Charlotte Bruckermann (MPI for Social Anthropology) has shown that international carbon credit trading has resulted in large areas of forest in China being designated as carbon sinks and treated as a financial product. The success of forestry projects is thus no longer measured by the preservation of ecosystems, the protection of livelihoods, or timber production, but rather by the profits that can be made on international markets. And these profits from carbon trading do not benefit the primary producers, but rather financial traders and large forestry corporations. “This study shows in detail how even nature reserves are now being produced as speculative financialised products that are traded worldwide rather than serving the interests of local populations,” explains Hann.
Loans as poverty traps
Another consequence of financialisation that anthropologists are interested in is the proliferation of loans. Financially insecure households frequently turn to consumer credits to help cover some of their costs. Anthropological research in the UK demonstrates the extensive consequences of such dependence on financial products: heavily indebted households are often unable to keep up with their payment obligations and must face the continual threat of the seizure or even loss of their homes. In Croatia and Greece the use of loans to purchase residential property and the resulting debt is causing significant societal problems because many families completely underestimated the unpredictability of international financial politics and the high amount of private risk that this creates.
Growing resistance worldwide
“At this conference we are not just interested in tracing the less immediate consequences of financialisation in all spheres of life; we are also interested in whether and how resistance is forming in civil society against this far-reaching access to individual lives,” says Hann. Thus, the conference includes anthropological studies that show how tenants in many cities in Europe are organising to assert their interests in opposition to investment funds. Dr. Marc Morell (University of the Balearic Islands), for example, has examined how the local population of the Balearic Islands are increasingly fighting back against the international investors who are buying up neighbourhoods for use as holiday rentals, thereby turning entire urban and rural districts into objects of speculation. “Here, too, we can see how the interests of the local residents are largely disregarded. And they are making it clear that they will no longer tolerate this,” says Hann.
Studying global social change
The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is one of the world’s leading centres for research in socio-cultural anthropology. It was established in 1999 by Chris Hann and Günther Schlee, and moved to its permanent buildings at Advokatenweg 36 in Halle/Saale in 2001. Marie-Claire Foblets joined the Institute as Director of the Department ‘Law & Anthropology’ in 2012.
Common to all research projects at the Max Planck Institute is the comparative analysis of social change; it is primarily in this domain that its researchers contribute to anthropological theory, though many programmes also have applied significance and political topicality. Fieldwork is an essential part of almost all projects. Some 175 researchers from over 30 countries currently work at the Institute. In addition, the Institute also hosts countless guest researchers who join in the scholarly discussions.
Conference programme and abstracts:
http://www.eth.mpg.de/de/events?url=6588%2Fevent_details_2136550211.html
More information on the research group ‘Financialisation’
http://www.eth.mpg.de/4081417/financialisation
Contact for this press release
Prof. Dr. Chris Hann
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Department ‘Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia’
Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle (Saale)
Tel.: 0345 2927-200
E-mail: hann@eth.mpg.de
http://www.eth.mpg.de/hann
PR contact
Stefan Schwendtner
Press and Public Relations
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle (Saale)
Tel.: 0345 2927-425
E-mail: schwendtner@eth.mpg.de
http://www.eth.mpg.de