Paul Gilbert

University of Sussex, School of Global Studies, Faculty Member

University of Brighton, School of Environment and Technology, Faculty Member

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Senior Lecturer in International Development, University of Sussex (2017-)

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Matthew Eagleton-Pierce

SOAS University of London

Muqtedar Khan

University of Delaware

B. Harun Küçük

University of Pennsylvania

Jerome Whitington

New York University

Richard Bellamy

University College London

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Noe Cornago

University of the Basque Country, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

Sean Patrick Donlan

The University of the South Pacific

ARCHIE B CARROLL

The University of Georgia

Patrick Neveling

Bournemouth University

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Papers by Paul Gilbert

Sovereignty and tragedy in contemporary critiques of investor state dispute settlement

London Review of International Law, 2018

Sovereignty and tragedy in contemporary critiques of investor state dispute settlement Article (A... more

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The anthropology of financial intent

Finance and Society, 2017

Much has been learned about calculation, commodification and marketization from the social studie... more Much has been learned about calculation, commodification and marketization from the social studies of markets and finance. But what of capitalization? What is distinctive about this mode of valuation and the reality it impels? What does it mean to live under the ‘asset condition’? In Capitalization: A Cultural Guide, Fabian Muniesa and his colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation take us on a tour across multiple continents and several centuries, introducing us to capitalization as a ‘cultural syndrome’. Their pragmatist enquiry involves tracing capitalization via the scenarios in which value is created, and the gaze that stimulates such value-creation. The result is a field guide to the terrain of capitalization that integrates anthropological work on the dramaturgy of finance with sociological attention to the technicalities of valuation. The stage is set for further investigation into the uneven distribution of the capacity to capitalize and its consequences.

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Bangladesh as the “Next Frontier”? Positioning the Nation in a Global Financial Hierarchy

Public Anthropologist, 2019

In this article, I examine the relationship between the speculative projects embarked upon by you... more In this article, I examine the relationship between the speculative projects embarked upon by young entrepreneurs and bankers in Dhaka during 2013, and the attempts made by analysts and nation-branding experts to present Bangladesh as a worthy “frontier” for speculative foreign investment. In order to induce others to speculate on their visions for Bangladesh, they variously positioned the nation via reference to the ratings imposed on it by credit rating agencies, the emergence of regional hegemons including members of the brics, and the apparent decline of “formerly” developed European nations. As purchasing power comes to mark a nation’s position within a hierarchical global market, nationhood comes to be recast as consumer-citizenship. The speculative imaginaries projected by these entrepreneurs, bankers and nation-branding experts have the capacity to both reinforce and rework the hierarchies into which “frontier” nations are routinely placed by analysts in global financial cen...

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Commentary: the ranking explosion

Social Anthropology, 2015

I heard-is it true? It can't be true-that Sussex has slipped out of the Top 100 universities-in t... more I heard-is it true? It can't be true-that Sussex has slipped out of the Top 100 universities-in the world rankings? Tell me, what is its reputation like now, over there? How do people talk about it?' So began my exchange with the Chief Economist of Bangladesh's central bank. We met in late 2013, as part my ethnographic attempt to probe the constitution of Bangladesh's 'investment climate' as an

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Speculating on sovereignty: ‘money mining’ and corporate foreign policy at the extractive industry frontier

Economy and Society, 2020

This paper develops an approach for solving the problem of least-cost transition firing sequences... more This paper develops an approach for solving the problem of least-cost transition firing sequences estimation in labeled Petri nets with unobservable transitions. Each transition in the net is labeled as either observable or unobservable, and has a nonnegative cost. Additionally, we assume that the net system is bounded, the unobservable subnet is acyclic, and the cost of each unobservable transition is strictly positive. We propose the method mainly on the basis of the notions of basis marking and basis reachability graph (BRG), which is a compact representation of the reachability graph of the net system. By sacrificing extra storage space to keep the BRG and other necessary information in memory, some time-consuming computations are moved off-line. This makes our proposed approach more feasible for on-line applications. Finally, we present a brief survey and comparison of some representative methods that use labeled Petri nets as a formalism in the literature. INDEX TERMS Basis reachability graph (BRG), discrete event system (DES), Petri net (PN), transition firing sequence.

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Introduction: ethnographic engagements with global elites

Focaal, Jun 1, 2018

Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system and inequality has recently been re... more Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system and inequality has recently been revitalized. Most ethnographers have done this from "below, while studies of financial, political and other professional elites have tended to avoid the language of class, capital and inequality. This themed section draws together ethnographies of family wealth transfers, philanthropy, and private-sector development, to reflect upon the place of critique in the anthropology of elites. While disciplinary norms and ethics usually promote deferral to our research participants, the uncritical translation of these norms "upwards" to studies of elites raises concerns. We argue for a critical approach that does not seek political purity, nor attempt to "get the goods" on elites, but which makes explicit the politics involved in doing ethnography with elites.

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Giving as “De-Risking”: Philanthropy, Impact Investment and the Pandemic Response

Public Anthropologist

This article examines the role played by philanthrocapitalist foundations in impact investing for... more This article examines the role played by philanthrocapitalist foundations in impact investing for international development, focusing on the covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Initiative (covax) as a response to the current pandemic. Philanthrocapitalists and development institutions are increasingly turning to “blended finance” and “social bonds” to address the gaps in funding required to meet global development agendas, particularly in the arena of global health. These impact investing mechanisms deploy public or philanthropic money to leverage for-profit investment in development, by “de-risking” (providing guarantees for) interventions that might otherwise put private capital at risk. Via covax, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has platformed a pandemic response centred on this approach, resisting alternative responses – such as the proposal for a temporary waiver to pharmaceutical patent rights – that seek to challenge the prevailing trade architecture. The global policy resp...

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Speculating on sovereignty: ‘money mining’ and corporate foreign policy at the extractive industry frontier

Economy and Society, 2020

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The Oxygenation of Extraction and Future Global Ecological Democracy: The City of London, the Alternative Investment Market and oil in frontiers in Africa

This article explores how the governance of the City of London Corporation perpetuates the oxygen... more This article explores how the governance of the City of London Corporation perpetuates the oxygenation of extraction, with a focus on oil frontiers and ecological impacts in Africa. It shows how this extractive system limits environmental justice through a spider's web of tax havens linked to the notoriously underregulated Alternative Investment Market. The contemporary success of the City of London Corporation is supported by an archaic membership system drawn from financial services. This has also allowed it to support the establishment of the most successful network of secrecy jurisdictions of 'tax havens' on the planet, supporting flows for illicit business in commodity frontiers. As extractive operations are given life by the financial flows that circulate through the City and its offshore empire, and take control of land, the potential for local communities to utilise their local ecological knowledge is asphyxiated, limiting the protection of food systems and endangered species. The article explains how this system functions, and why it needs to be reformed to limit Earth's sixth mass extinction. It does so through case studies of the City of London, the Niger Delta and Turkana Kenya, using ethnography and semi structured interviews. A new system of ecological direct democracy is proposed, limiting global corruption flows into the City's tax havens, allowing instead for a flourishing globalisation of ecological democracy.

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The development of difference Social change around the Ok Tedi Copper and Gold Mine, Papua New Guinea

The research presented here is based on one-month of fieldwork, during which forty-two interviews... more The research presented here is based on one-month of fieldwork, during which forty-two interviews were conducted in and around Tabubil in Papua New Guinea's Western Province. I argue that non-renewable resource extraction creates particular forms of inequality in Papua New Guinea, based on the legal status of customary landownership, an emerging class system associated with a form of nationalism which draws on imagery of a generic notion of kastom, and the need for mining companies and the state to identify clearly (geographically and territorially) bounded landowning groups as the recipients of royalty and compensation payments. While local actors may be deeply concerned about the prospects for continued access to morally and materially desirable forms of development following mine closure, elites working for Ok Tedi Mining Limited valorise kastom and 'village life' in such a way that they at times refuse to frame the inevitable closure of the mine as a problem.

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Introduction: ethnographic engagements with global elites

Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system and inequality has recently been re... more Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system and inequality has recently been revitalized. Most ethnographers have done this from “below, while studies of financial, political and other professional elites have tended to avoid the language of class, capital and inequality. This themed section draws together ethnographies of family wealth transfers, philanthropy, and private-sector development, to reflect upon the place of critique in the anthropology of elites. While disciplinary norms and ethics usually promote deferral to our research participants, the uncritical translation of these norms “upwards” to studies of elites raises concerns. We argue for a critical approach that does not seek political purity, nor attempt to “get the goods” on elites, but which makes explicit the politics involved in doing ethnography with elites.

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‘Land defenders’ and the political ecology of coal power in Bangladesh

Environmental Defenders, 2021

Recent contributions to &#39;statistical political ecology&#39; have identified political... more Recent contributions to &#39;statistical political ecology&#39; have identified political and economic formations associated with the killing, criminalization and intimidation of land and environmental defenders-as well as characteristics of successful resistance movements in which defenders play a part. This chapter is concerned with the land defenders who have mobilised against resurgent coal power in Bangladesh over the last decade and a half. Many of these defenders have been subjected to violence within the context of conflicts and movements that fit emerging global patterns. However, an analysis of the political economy of coal power in Bangladesh reveals particular contradictions in the measures of &#39;corruption&#39; and &#39;rule of law&#39; that facilitate cross-national comparison of the contexts in which defenders face violence. This chapter concludes by highlighting the degree to which efforts to promote good governance and rule of law can facilitate the expansion of violent extractive operations that put land and environmental defenders at risk. It calls for greater attention to the &#39;violence footprints&#39; of transnational corporations and donor agencies with whom the sovereign power of the Bangladeshi state is entangled.

Trouble in Para-sites: Deference and Influence in the Ethnography of Epistemic Elites

Anthropology in Action, 2015

Through his enduring efforts to interrogate the regulative ideals of fieldwork, George Marcus has... more Through his enduring efforts to interrogate the regulative ideals of fieldwork, George Marcus has empowered doctoral students in anthropology to rethink their ethnographic encounters in terms that reflect novel objects and contexts of inquiry. Marcus' work has culminated in a charter for ethnographic research among 'epistemic communities' that requires 'deferral' to these elite modes of knowing. For adherents to this programme of methodological reform, the deliberately staged 'para-site'an opportunity for ethnographers and their 'epistemic partners' to reflect upon a shared intellectual purposeis the signature fieldwork encounter. This paper draws on doctoral research carried out among the overlapping epistemic communities that comprise London's market for mining finance, and reviews an attempt to carve out a para-site of my own. Troubled by this experience, and by the ascendant style of deferent anthropology, I think through possibilities for more critical ethnographic research among epistemic elites.

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Valuation Studies: A Collaborative Valuation in Practice

Valuation Studies, 2014

This discussion note provides a perspective on valuation studies by a group of PhD students. Base... more This discussion note provides a perspective on valuation studies by a group of PhD students. Based on impressions from the Valuation as Practice workshop at The University of Edinburgh in early 2014 we were inspired by the example of Kjellberg et al. (2013) to debate how we see, understand, and are inspired by the field of valuation studies. It is the hope of the editors that sharing the concerns of early-stage researchers starting out in a field in flux, may be of use to, and perhaps spur, senior contributors to further develop this emerging research landscape. Using the workshop experience as a springboard, we argue that the domain of valuation studies still relies heavily on influences from the study of economics, with a strong emphasis on processes of quantification and calculation. With apparent pragmatism within the field, concern as to what might be lost by this narrower perspective is raised. Additionally, we call for the exploration of the possibility of a common language o...

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Class, complicity, and capitalist ambition in Dhaka’s elite enclaves

Focaal, 2018

This article draws on ethnographic work carried out in London and Dhaka as part of a multisited p... more This article draws on ethnographic work carried out in London and Dhaka as part of a multisited project exploring the production of investment opportunities for (predominantly British) companies in Bangladesh. Focusing on the ready-made garments (RMG) sector in the run-up to, and in the wake of, the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, I trace aid-funded attempts to improve Bangladesh’s investment climate and engagements with these initiatives by brokers seeking to “rebrand” Bangladesh as an investment destination and by RMG factory-owning businesspeople based in Dhaka. Writing against the “postcritical turn,” I suggest that responding to the explicit recognition by business elites of their own complicity in the exploitation of garment workers provides an entry point for a critical account of private sector development that enhances, not curtails, ethnographic understanding.

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The risks of others: imperial nostalgia and technologies of the financial imagination

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BINGOs and environmental defenders

Environmental Defenders

Mutuality Talk in a Family-Owned Multinational

Journal of Business Anthropology

This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business schoo... more This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business school and a family-owned multinational corporation, concerned with promoting ‘mutuality in business’ as a new frontier of responsible capitalism. While the business school partners treated mutuality as a new principle central to an emergent ethical capitalism, the corporation claimed mutuality as a long-established value unique to their company. Both interpretations foreground a central problem in recent writing on the anthropology of business/corporations: the tension between the claim that economic life is always embedded within a moral calculus, and the shift towards increasingly ethical behaviour among many corporations. Further, recent work in the anthropology of business rejects normative evaluations of corporate ethicizing. When corporations lay claim to ethical renewal, but maintain a commitment to competition and growth, then anthropologists must balance a sympathetic engagement wit...

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BINGO Complicity, Necropolitical Ecology & Environmental Defenders

IUCN Policy Matters, 2021

Several big international non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) have been instrumental in incre... more Several big international non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) have been instrumental in increasing the attention brought to the lived experiences of environmental and land defenders and the atmospheres of violence they face. Among the many BINGOs who frame themselves as 'supporters' or 'protectors' of environmental and land defenders, several have been complicit in violence perpetrated by park guards and resource extraction companies. In this paper, we unpack the multifaceted nature of the role BINGOs play in shaping the atmospheres of violence with which environmental defenders contend. While BINGOs have acted as whistle-blowers and advocates providing legal assistance to at-risk defenders, they have also been complicit in 'green violence' perpetrated in the name of conservation, and more subtle relationships of 'partnership' with industries and specific corporations engaged in neo-colonial forms of extraction and violence against defenders. BINGO complicity with the violence against defenders replays the historical entanglement of some organisations with displacement and violence enacted in the name of colonial era conservation. We argue that BINGOs can, and must, work towards more radical forms of decolonial solidarity with environmental and land defenders who contend with atmospheres of violence shaped, in many cases, by conservation efforts and resource extraction activities with which BINGOs may be complicit, either directly, or through various forms of 'partnership'.

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Mutuality Talk in a Family-Owned Multinational: Anthropological Categories & Critical Analyses of Corporate Ethicizing

Journal of Business Anthropology, 2020

This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business schoo... more This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business school and a family-owned multinational corporation, concerned with promoting 'mutuality in business' as a new frontier of responsible capitalism. While the business school partners treated mutuality as a new principle central to an emergent ethical capitalism, the corporation claimed mutuality as a long-established value unique to their company. Both interpretations foreground a central problem in recent writing on the anthropology of business/corporations: the tension between the claim that economic life is always embedded within a moral calculus, and the shift towards increasingly ethical behaviour among many corporations. Further, recent work in the anthropology of business rejects normative evaluations of corporate ethicizing. When corporations lay claim to ethical renewal, but maintain a commitment to competition and growth, then anthropologists must balance a sympathetic engagement with corporate ethicizing, and critical engagement with growth-based strategies.

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Sovereignty and tragedy in contemporary critiques of investor state dispute settlement

London Review of International Law, 2018

Sovereignty and tragedy in contemporary critiques of investor state dispute settlement Article (A... more

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The anthropology of financial intent

Finance and Society, 2017

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Bangladesh as the “Next Frontier”? Positioning the Nation in a Global Financial Hierarchy

Public Anthropologist, 2019

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Commentary: the ranking explosion

Social Anthropology, 2015

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Speculating on sovereignty: ‘money mining’ and corporate foreign policy at the extractive industry frontier

Economy and Society, 2020

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Introduction: ethnographic engagements with global elites

Focaal, Jun 1, 2018

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Giving as “De-Risking”: Philanthropy, Impact Investment and the Pandemic Response

Public Anthropologist

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Speculating on sovereignty: ‘money mining’ and corporate foreign policy at the extractive industry frontier

Economy and Society, 2020

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The Oxygenation of Extraction and Future Global Ecological Democracy: The City of London, the Alternative Investment Market and oil in frontiers in Africa

Download

The development of difference Social change around the Ok Tedi Copper and Gold Mine, Papua New Guinea

Download

Introduction: ethnographic engagements with global elites

Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system and inequality has recently been re... more Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system and inequality has recently been revitalized. Most ethnographers have done this from “below, while studies of financial, political and other professional elites have tended to avoid the language of class, capital and inequality. This themed section draws together ethnographies of family wealth transfers, philanthropy, and private-sector development, to reflect upon the place of critique in the anthropology of elites. While disciplinary norms and ethics usually promote deferral to our research participants, the uncritical translation of these norms “upwards” to studies of elites raises concerns. We argue for a critical approach that does not seek political purity, nor attempt to “get the goods” on elites, but which makes explicit the politics involved in doing ethnography with elites.

Download

‘Land defenders’ and the political ecology of coal power in Bangladesh

Environmental Defenders, 2021

Trouble in Para-sites: Deference and Influence in the Ethnography of Epistemic Elites

Anthropology in Action, 2015

Download

Valuation Studies: A Collaborative Valuation in Practice

Valuation Studies, 2014

Download

Class, complicity, and capitalist ambition in Dhaka’s elite enclaves

Focaal, 2018

Download

The risks of others: imperial nostalgia and technologies of the financial imagination

Download

BINGOs and environmental defenders

Environmental Defenders

Mutuality Talk in a Family-Owned Multinational

Journal of Business Anthropology

Download

BINGO Complicity, Necropolitical Ecology & Environmental Defenders

IUCN Policy Matters, 2021

Download

Mutuality Talk in a Family-Owned Multinational: Anthropological Categories & Critical Analyses of Corporate Ethicizing

Journal of Business Anthropology, 2020

This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business schoo... more This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business school and a family-owned multinational corporation, concerned with promoting 'mutuality in business' as a new frontier of responsible capitalism. While the business school partners treated mutuality as a new principle central to an emergent ethical capitalism, the corporation claimed mutuality as a long-established value unique to their company. Both interpretations foreground a central problem in recent writing on the anthropology of business/corporations: the tension between the claim that economic life is always embedded within a moral calculus, and the shift towards increasingly ethical behaviour among many corporations. Further, recent work in the anthropology of business rejects normative evaluations of corporate ethicizing. When corporations lay claim to ethical renewal, but maintain a commitment to competition and growth, then anthropologists must balance a sympathetic engagement with corporate ethicizing, and critical engagement with growth-based strategies.

Download

BINGOs and environmental defenders: NGO complicity in atmospheres of violence and the possibilities for decolonial solidarity with defenders

Environmental defenders: deadly struggles for life and territory. Routledge explorations in environmental studies, 2021

Over the past decade, several big international non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) have been... more Over the past decade, several big international non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) have been instrumental in increasing the attention brought to the lived experiences of environmental and land defenders and the atmospheres of violence they face. Among the many BINGOs who frame themselves as 'supporters' or 'protectors' of environmental and land defenders, several have been complicit in violence perpetrated by park guards and oil companies. In this paper, we unpack the multifaceted nature of the role BINGOs play in shaping the atmospheres of violence with which environmental defenders contend. While BINGOs have acted as whistle-blowers and advocates providing legal assistance to at-risk defenders, they have also been complicit in 'green violence' perpetrated in the name of conservation, and more subtle relationships of 'partnership' with industries and specific corporations engaged in neo-colonial forms of extraction and violence against defenders. BINGO complicity with the violence against defenders replays the historical entanglement of some organizations with displacement and violence enacted in the name of colonial era conservation. We argue that BINGOs can, and must, work towards more radical forms of decolonial solidarity with environmental and land defenders who contend with atmospheres of violence shaped, in many cases, by conservation efforts and resource extraction activities with which BINGOs may be complicit, either directly, or through various forms of 'partnership.'

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Land defenders’ and the political ecology of coal power in Bangladesh

Environmental defenders: deadly struggles for life and territory. Routledge explorations in environmental studies, 2021

Recent contributions to 'statistical political ecology' have identified political and economic f... more Recent contributions to 'statistical political ecology' have identified political and economic formations associated with the killing, criminalization and intimidation of land and environmental defenders-as well as characteristics of successful resistance movements in which defenders play a part. This chapter is concerned with the land defenders who have mobilised against resurgent coal power in Bangladesh over the last decade and a half. Many of these defenders have been subjected to violence within the context of conflicts and movements that fit emerging global patterns. However, an analysis of the political economy of coal power in Bangladesh reveals particular contradictions in the measures of 'corruption' and 'rule of law' that facilitate cross-national comparison of the contexts in which defenders face violence. This chapter concludes by highlighting the degree to which efforts to promote good governance and rule of law can facilitate the expansion of violent extractive operations that put land and environmental defenders at risk. It calls for greater attention to the 'violence footprints' of transnational corporations and donor agencies with whom the sovereign power of the Bangladeshi state is entangled.

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Expropriating the future: turning ore deposits and legitimate expectations into assets

Assetization: turning things into assets in technoscientific capitalism. Inside Technology, 2020

In this chapter, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the City of London between 2012-... more In this chapter, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the City of London between 2012-2014 to explore the valuation techniques that underpin investment in mineral exploration. At the time of my fieldwork, carried out with investors, analysts, consulting geologists and lawyers, the mining market was seeking out new frontiers as established resource-rich jurisdictions became less profitable, or began to show signs of what analysts termed ‘resource nationalism’ (the desire to renegotiate contracts, taxation and royalty rates in terms more favorable to host states). Against this background, the chapter explores the capitalization devices, narratives and durable legal foundations through which mineral deposits are transformed into assets, valued in terms of the future revenue they promise their investors.

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Making critical materials valuable: decarbonization, investment & ‘political risk’.

A Bleicher & A Pehlken (eds.) The Material Basis of Energy Transitions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Renewable Energy and Critical Materials. , 2020

Any coherent attempt to restrict warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels will require ... more Any coherent attempt to restrict warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels will require sustained efforts to decarbonize electricity production and transport infrastructure. Any such moves will have consequences for the demand of certain ‘critical raw materials’, notably cobalt, lithium and platinum group metals (PGMs). This chapter draws on Science & Technology Studies approaches to studying valuation practices and resource-making to examine frontiers of critical material extraction in the DRC (cobalt, lithium) and South Africa (platinum group metals). It traces the role that royalty and taxation rates, stability clauses and political risk assessments play in shaping critical material frontiers in post-colonial contexts. The chapter argues that embedding measures of ‘political risk’ into assessments of critical raw materials based on the needs of wealthy resource-importing countries risks reproducing colonial legacies of violent and unequal extraction. It argues for the need to ‘provincialize’ criticality assessments, starting from resource-rich settings and the strategic agendas that shape their domestic mineral policies.

Book Review: The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy by Salil Tripathi

LSE Review of Books, 2017

In The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy, Salil Tripathi re... more In The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy, Salil Tripathi revisits Bangladesh’s liberation war. As a young journalist, Tripathi encountered Farooq Rahman, the unrepentant colonel who played a pivotal role in the assassination of Bangladesh’s revered independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but who was granted indemnity in the immediate aftermath. Farooq Rahman lived freely in Dhaka, even running for president, before his eventual execution by a war crimes tribunal in 2010. How, asks Tripathi, could Bangladesh’s independence leader be revered while his killers walked free? Why did it take so long to establish a war crimes tribunal? And how might Bangladesh ‘put its blood-soaked past behind without condoning the guilty’? Review by Paul Gilbert.

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Book Review: Jamie Morgan's 'What is Neoclassical Economics?'

What epithet could carry more emotive force where economic sociologists are concerned than the ‘n... more What epithet could carry more emotive force where economic sociologists are concerned than the ‘neoclassical’ in neoclassical economics? In the pages of this very newsletter, Edward Nik-Khah (2006: 19) has cautioned that the performativity of economics programme was ‘fostering a situation where science studies will come to increasingly
resemble neoclassical economics, if not serve as its cheerleader.’ And, in the concluding rounds of the virtualism/performativity debate between Callon (2005) and Miller (2005), a central concern was the specific ‘role of neo-classical economics in this process of configuration-reconfiguration of concrete markets’ (Callon, 2005: 10, emphasis added).

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Book Review: Thomas Schultz's 'Transnational Legality'

Are international arbitrators justified in referring to their work as a matter of creating privat... more Are international arbitrators justified in referring to their work as a matter of creating private law? Is it prudent for legal scholars in search of new objects of study to name arbitration as a transnational legal – rather than normative – regime? What is at stake when we call something law, and how can we do so with confidence? In Transnational Legality, Thomas Schultz takes issue with the view, articulated by the ‘French school’ of arbitration, that international arbitration constitutes its own transnational, stateless legal order. The majority of the text is, however, not concerned so much with arbitration as with the question of how to grasp law as a distinctive field of study.

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Book Review: Luc Boltanski's Mysteries & Conspiracies

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Book Review: Stuart Kirsch's Mining Capitalism

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Book Review: McNeish & Logan's Flammable Societies

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Book Review: Walter Friedman's Fortune Tellers

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Profiting from Precarity (Sociology lens blog)

Sociology Lens, 2015

In Italy during the 1970s, labour movements responding to and resisting the rigidity of assembly-... more In Italy during the 1970s, labour movements responding to and resisting the rigidity of assembly-line employment celebrated precarious patterns of work; precarity was something beautiful (precario bello). This, Stevphen Shukaitis observes, “is an eminently sensible thing to say when you think about what the kind of ‘security’ and ‘stability’ is created by working in a petrochemical factory or on an automobile assembly line for forty years.” More recently, popular discussions of precarity in the Anglophone world have tended to orient themselves around Guy Standing’s take on ‘the precariat’, which he understands as “a [global] class in the making, approaching a consciousness of common vulnerability.” What unites the precariat – since for Standing this class in the making may include both those on workfare and tenuously ‘self-employed’ young graduates in the digital economy – is akin to that which James H. Smith terms “temporal dispossession” or “the inability to plan, predict, or build futures in an incremental way.” Responding to these apparently divergent forms or visions of precarity, Shukaitis has elsewhere suggested that precarity ought not to be seen as a category to be applied, but as a “moment of instability in the radical political imagination that is as much a promise as a threat.”

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What does 'disruptive innovation' disrupt? (Sociology lens blog)

Sociology Lens, 2015

At the end of last week, Ellen MacArthur’s second Disruptive Innovation Festival came to a close,... more At the end of last week, Ellen MacArthur’s second Disruptive Innovation Festival came to a close, having dedicated the first three weeks of November “to exploring the ideas and innovations which are shaping our changing economy, connecting participants directly with the world’s most forward-looking start-ups, entrepreneurs, designers, thought-leaders and policymakers via a unique collaborative online format.” While the Festival was in full swing (although not apparently in response to it), Lee Vinson, a Science & Technology Studies professor at Stevens Institute of Technology (‘The Innovation University®’) published his wonderful, searing attack on innovation–babble, ‘95 Theses on Innovation.’ Innovation, argues Vinson, is the central ideology of our age. The innovation ideology presents technological change as the “key to both economic growth and quality of life,” and reaches its most pernicious form in Clayton Christensen’s ‘disruptive innovation’ concept, the apparent inspiration for MacArthur’s Festival.

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Anthropology and elites: 'Studying up', politically (DLProg blog)

Developmental Leadership Program Blog, 2016

Some strikingly parallel questions are being asked in my own discipline of anthropology and by th... more

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Generating Extractive Industry Capitalism: Corporate Foreign Policy and the Resource Frontier (Resource Worlds blog)

Resource Worlds, 2016

Each year in the Autumn, London's Geological Society hosts 'FINEX: Exploration Meets the City' in... more Each year in the Autumn, London's Geological Society hosts 'FINEX: Exploration Meets the City' in their well-appointed premises on Piccadilly. Perhaps more than any of the other similar events hosted year-round in the City of London's livery companies and Chambers of Commerce, FINEX epitomizes the commercialization of geological expertise upon which mineral exploration depends. Partly a matchmaking event for nanciers and geologists, FINEX also includes seminars from lawyers who advise on the key 'political risks' facing the metals and mining sector, or provide detailed advice on navigating the mineral codes of newly attractive 'frontier' jurisdictions. Alongside the networking and the expert briengs, FINEX and events like it always make plenty of time for the spectacle of the investor pitch.

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Barely managing: on what's missing from left political economy (New Socialist blog)

by Paul Gilbert and Sahil Jai Dutta

New Socialist, 2017

There's a dffierence between policies and power. If a left-wing party wants to turn its manifesto... more There's a dffierence between policies and power. If a left-wing party wants to turn its manifesto promises into political practice it needs to construct the capacity to do so. The gap between a minister's policy aspiration and the lived reality of a worker or service user is vast, and composed of a chain of different institutions, expertise and personnel. This gap corrupts the democratic ideal that elected politicians make policies, while civil servants merely carry them out. Connecting these disparate parts of the British state are not the Machiavellian scheming of Yes Minster bureaucrats. Instead, it's the managerial reforms that sought to rationalise the state bureaucracy that must be challenged. It's here, in what Christopher Hood called the tools of New Public Management (NPM), that neoliberalism is deeply encoded. These techniques, used to design, cost and evaluate state action are so embedded in state administration, that it's perhaps no surprise that the Labour Party's own briefing on 'Alternative Models of Ownership' says so little about alternative, democratic forms of management. While it (rightly) highlights the importance of 'democratising' ownership, it depicts management as a simple corollary of ownership. Here, the very real ills which beset privatised services and infrastructure are simply laid at the door of privatisation. But reversing decades of privatisation will not produce the return of a mythic " public service ethos ". Reforming ownership is not enough, for a Left political economy to succeed, managerialism must matter too.

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CfP: Techno-scientific expertise and geographical imaginaries in the making of new resource frontiers

Short abstract This panel invites contributions from scholars investigating the role that technic... more Short abstract This panel invites contributions from scholars investigating the role that technical experts (e.g. geologists, chemical engineers, metallurgists, valuation consultants) and technologies play in opening up new frontiers for mineral extraction in the 'anthroposphere' and beyond. Long abstract Despite a burgeoning STS literature on resource materialities, little attention has been given to the new alliances of expertise, materialities, and infrastructures that enable extractive projects to be developed within the 'anthroposphere' or otherwise beyond conventional terrestrial geographies of natural resource extraction. From the 'emerging marketplace' created by advances in deep sea mining or secondary mining technologies, to the valorization of certain minerals and rare earths as 'critical' to national security, and the speculative opportunities generated by the prospect of asteroid mining-the generation of new mining frontiers is increasingly dependent upon the successful convergence of techno-scientific expertise, financial infrastructures and expansive geo-political imaginaries. This panel invites contributions from scholars investigating the role that technical experts (e.g. geologists, chemical engineers, metallurgists, valuation consultants) and technologies play in opening up new frontiers for mineral extraction, and which address the following:

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CfP: Private Sector Area Studies: Regional Expertise & Knowledge Production in the Political Risk Industry’ (RGS-IBG Political Geography Research Group Sponsored Session)

Political geographers have recently outlined an emerging ‘third wave’ of critical area studies th... more Political geographers have recently outlined an emerging ‘third wave’ of critical area studies that is attentive to the politics of representation, and sceptical about the solidity of regional ‘units’ (e.g. Sidaway et al. 2016). This third wave is said to follow a first wave of (less critical, more instrumental) Imperial area studies designed to aid the British colonial project, and a second wave of Cold War area expertise cultivated among American social scientists. At the same time, others have lamented the decline of field-based area studies and the emergence of ‘new cartographic white spaces’ as reports on regional conflict are increasingly produced 'without leaving the office', via remote-sensing technologies and a reliance on (often unacknowledged) research assistants (Duffield 2015). Alongside this reconfiguration of area studies – towards the critical, but away from the field-based – political risk analysis has emerged as a growth industry in its own right, and one with substantial influence. Indeed, the university protocols that often impede fieldwork in regions deemed ‘risky’ are themselves dependent on ratings and advice produced by political risk analysis and insurance firms (Perera 2017). Producing maps, indices and advice for transnational executives and global policy elites – and recruiting social science graduates from elite universities (LSE, Columbia) in global financial centres – the political risk industry has emerged as a key site for the production of instrumental private sector area expertise, insulated from contemporary debates about the prospect of a ‘critical’ area studies and the decline of fieldwork-based expertise. Yet knowledge production in the political risk industry has received scant geographical attention to date.

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Mutuality Talk in a Family-Owned Multinational: Anthropological Categories & Critical Analyses of Corporate Ethicizing

by Catherine Dolan and Paul Gilbert

Journal of Business Anthropology, 2020

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