The geographies of social finance: Poverty regulation through the ‘invisible heart’ of markets

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Rosenman
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
The Public ◽  
Geographical Research ◽  
Private Profit ◽  
The Invisible

The global financial and anti-poverty industries are embracing an investment philosophy called social finance, which claims that private profit-making can create positive benefits for society. Attempting to resolve the problems of capitalism from within the system, social finance reframes finance as a force for engendering, rather than disrupting, the public good. This article argues that social finance raises theoretical concerns for geographical research on finance, poverty, and neoliberalizing capitalism. I outline a typology of social finance’s forms and propose a geographical research agenda, arguing that social finance practitioners’ simplistic framings of geography belie many other geographies that constitute what is both an emerging financial marketplace and a logic of poverty regulation.

scholarly journals Power and space in the drone age: a literature review and politico-geographical research agenda

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Klauser ◽  
S. Pedrozo
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Public ◽  
Geographical Research ◽  
Rural Space ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Institutional Contexts

Abstract. Camera-fitted drones are now easily affordable to the public. The resulting proliferation of the aerial gaze raises a series of critical issues, ranging from the changing regimes of visibility across urban and rural space to the novel risks and dynamics of control implied by current drone developments. The paper argues that a distinct "spatial curiosity" and "power sensitivity" are required if we are to grasp and explore these issues. On this basis, and grounded in an extensive literature review, the paper outlines a politico-geographical research agenda for the investigation of the making, functioning and implications of drone systems. Such an agenda, it is claimed, could afford deepened insight into the driving forces that are behind current drone developments, would show how drones work in different institutional contexts, and could highlight how drones impact on the envisioned reality. This in turn would provide a deepened understanding of the "politics of visibility", "politics of the air" and "politics of the ground" conveyed by drones, and open up a wider conceptual reflection on the role of the aerial dimension in the projection of power across and within space.

scholarly journals Problem of Sports Betting in Kenya: Striking a Balance between Private Profit and Public Good

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Victoria Gitau
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Sports Betting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Profit

The inception of sports betting in Kenya has brought forth great excitement to prospective bettors and shrewd betting operators which has resulted in an equal amount of controversy and muddle. This note seeks to address the conflict between the private profit that investors and the economy reap, and the public good that the state owes its citizens by virtue of its fiduciary duty over its people. The author scrutinises the current law of sports betting in Kenya to demonstrate that it is not sufficient to speak to the two conflicting issues and that a concession is possible.

Positional Commitments and the Public Good: Perceptions of a Defecting Group Leader

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Sibicky ◽  
Cortney B. Richardson ◽  
Anna M. Gruntz ◽  
Timothy J. Binegar ◽  
David A. Schroeder ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Group Leader ◽  
The Public

Finding Fault with the Nexus Pipeline? Agency Capture and the Public Good

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Kear
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Environmental Impact Statement ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fracturing Process ◽  
Natural Gas Industry ◽  
Regulatory Commission

Natural gas is an increasingly vital U.S. energy source that is presently being tapped and transported across state and international boundaries. Controversy engulfs natural gas, from the hydraulic fracturing process used to liberate it from massive, gas-laden Appalachian shale deposits, to the permitting and construction of new interstate pipelines bringing it to markets. This case explores the controversy flowing from the proposed 256-mile-long interstate Nexus pipeline transecting northern Ohio, southeastern Michigan and terminating at the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. As the lead agency regulating and permitting interstate pipelines, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is also tasked with mitigating environmental risks through the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act's Environmental Impact Statement process. Pipeline opponents assert that a captured federal agency ignores public and scientific input, inadequately addresses public health and safety risks, preempts local control, and wields eminent domain powers at the expense of landowners, cities, and everyone in the pipeline path. Proponents counter that pipelines are the safest means of transporting domestically abundant, cleaner burning, affordable gas to markets that will boost local and regional economies and serve the public good. Debates over what constitutes the public good are only one set in a long list of contentious issues including pipeline safety, proposed routes, property rights, public voice, and questions over the scientific and democratic validity of the Environmental Impact Statement process. The Nexus pipeline provides a sobering example that simple energy policy solutions and compromise are elusive—effectively fueling greater conflict as the natural gas industry booms.

Sentientist Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public

Chapter 3 asks what kinds of institutions are needed to protect the worth and rights of sentient creatures. The chapter’s ultimate claim is that they are best protected by democratic institutions: that is, institutions which are participative, deliberative, and representative, and underpinned by a set of entrenched rights. Crucially, the chapter further argues that those institutions should be comprised of dedicated animal representatives. The job of those representatives should be to act as trustees of the interests of ‘animal members’ of the political community. In other words, their job should be to translate the interests of animals with whom we share a ‘community of fate’ into their deliberations with other representatives over what is in the public good.

‘Everything Belongs to God’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Rech
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wealth Redistribution ◽  
Social Teachings

This chapter examines and contextualizes Sayyid Qutb’s doctrine of property and social justice, which he articulated at a time of deep social conflicts in Egypt. The chapter describes how Qutb, along with other writers concerned with economic inequality in the 1920s–40s such as Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949) and Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895–1971), conceptualised private ownership as a form of power that must be limited by religious obligations and subordinated to the public good. The chapter further shows that Qutb made this notion of restrained property central to a broader theory of social justice and wealth redistribution by combining the social teachings of the Qur’an with the modern ideal of the centralized interventionist state. Arguably this endeavour to revitalise the Quranic roots of Islamic charity and simultaneously appropriate the discourse of modern statehood made Qutb’s position oscillate between legalism and anti-legalism.

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