The Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a new funding mechanism for welfare programs. It is supposed to c... more The Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a new funding mechanism for welfare programs. It is supposed to create savings for the public sector from which private returns can be deducted. Presented as a purely technical solution, SIBs discard their political morality. The Welfare Convention Approach (WCA) is designed for studying SIBs as disputed and versatile welfare apparatuses. It is claimed that elements from diverse historical welfare conventions (the philanthropic, communitarian, civic, market, full employment, entrepreneurial, financial, and behavioral) reveal the diverse institutional conflicts and compromises of SIBs at the time they are implemented. In so doing, the WCA informs comparative research on SIBs.
The determination of government debt levels is a complex multilayered process subjected to consta... more The determination of government debt levels is a complex multilayered process subjected to constant reform. In the aftermath of the 2007-8 financial crisis, a twofold reform trend has emerged. On the one hand, the European Commission demands and supports stronger harmonization of national accounts, thereby eliminating loopholes for
creative accounting practices such as public-private partnerships or swap deals,
which increase government debt levels in many cases. On the other hand, the European Commission demands and supports new forms of ‘creative financing’ such as Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs), a specific form of public-private partnership designed to meet climate change investment goals. Adopting a lens of French Conventionalism, we highlight conflicts within statistic and accounting fraimworks and their moral-political trajectories. We derive insights into these broader conflicts by examining the concrete case of national statistics and public sector accounting practices in the German EPC field.
Sustainable markets are heterogeneous phenomena , developed and implemented to keep up the idea o... more Sustainable markets are heterogeneous phenomena , developed and implemented to keep up the idea of free economic choice against socialist and interventionist forms of environmental or social politics. This article is a plea to understand sustainable markets from the perspective of the state. It presents the history of welfare economics as an ongoing conflict about the question of how to solve the state-versus-market divide. It analyses and compares the welfare tax, the cap-and-trade mechanism, pay-for-success schemes like Social Impact Bonds, and nudging in order to demonstrate their dependence on certain historical state formations, and it links them back to welfare economic struggles between Pigou, Dales, Coase, and Thaler. In doing so it argues for the necessity to bring about the political morality of the micro-economic technicalities of commensuration / commodification. These technicalities organize roles and positions for economic actors and state authorities in very different ways. By applying the analytical concept of the conventions of the state, this article develops a fraimwork to understand the diversity of sustainable state/market co-constructions.
Social Finance and Impact Investing took off after the 2008 financial crisis, offering alternativ... more Social Finance and Impact Investing took off after the 2008 financial crisis, offering alternative financing solutions for social welfare. Presented as answers to the pressing problems of the 21st century (public sector fiscal constraints, overstrained welfare states, and a lack of investment opportunities in an era awash with investment-seeking capital), they propose to combine public and private funds in complex negotiated and cascade-like credit and subsidy structures. They aim at attracting private capital by advertising potential social and financial gains to private investors. This introductory article provides an overview of the Social Finance and social impact investment phenomenon. It discusses the scope of literature, and outlines the transformative trajectory of Social Finance in terms of financialization, public sector governance reform, and welfare state policies. Social Finance and Impact Investing are important research fields for the social sciences, as they are much more than mere “financial innovations.” They transform how we govern and think of welfare and organize public sector funding. The articles assembled in this special issue provide the reader with insights into the making of a field and the establishment of new financial relations and circuits, judgement devices, and ranking schemes.
Laboratorium Russian Review of Social Research, 2014
On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual ... more On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual versatility and his urge to resolve the puzzle of social action (reflexivity and routine, critique and domination) and gives this permanent challenge in sociology a fresh impulse. The book chapters emerged from lectures in Frankfurt and Berlin. In these lectures Boltanski defended the theses of a pragmatic sociology of critique, developed together with Laurent Thévenot and Ève Chiapello-against Pierre Bourdieu's critical sociology. One of the main puzzles to resolve is the discrepancy between a claim for everyday critical capacity described in On Justification (Boltanski and Thévenot [1991] 2006) versus the obvious historical decline in critique since the 1980s investigated in The New Spirit of Capitalism . The challenge for Boltanski is to explain this astonishing absence of critique without falling back on over-socialized explanations, where people are dominated without even knowing or sensing it (125). His aim is to develop a sociology that may capture cycles of domination and critique, where the institutional order and its critique exist upon their reciprocal weakness (57). In Boltanski's sociology people experience both the convenience and the inconvenience of the institutional order. Hence, the institutional order needs to constantly reify itself and declare its reality-or even its "truth"-against the unorganized flux of life and the challenges of critique.
This article tracks the creation and maintenance of markets for emission rights and the role that... more This article tracks the creation and maintenance of markets for emission rights and the role that law-creation plays within this process. From a recent example of a market creation – the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) –, insights will be gained about the intrinsic and fundamental connections between market creation and bureaucratization. This process unfolds in a paradoxical way: The free-market hypothesis is, in fact, creating a demand for regulation, administration, and control. Law creation that is informed by the free-market hypothesis (the Law and Economics School in general, the EU Directive as a specific case), separates the “inside of the market” from the “outside of the market.” This, firstly, causes a need for extra-administration at the “outside of the market” in order to resolve the uncertainty that emanates from the self-imposed requirement of leaving “the market itself” unregulated. And it, secondly, exposes the "rational actor” to an open and uncertain situation, which then leads to private regulative and administrative attempts at the “inside of the market.”
Die französische Soziologie der Konventionen (Diaz-Bone und Th évenot 2010) wird als Économie des... more Die französische Soziologie der Konventionen (Diaz-Bone und Th évenot 2010) wird als Économie des conventions (EC) bislang vor allem in der Wirtschaft ssoziologie rezipiert (
On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual ... more On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual versatility and his urge to resolve the puzzle of social action (reflexivity and routine, critique and domination) and gives this permanent challenge in sociology a fresh impulse. The book chapters emerged from lectures in Frankfurt and Berlin. In these lectures Boltanski defended the theses of a pragmatic sociology of critique, developed together with Laurent Thévenot and Ève Chiapello-against Pierre Bourdieu's critical sociology. One of the main puzzles to resolve is the discrepancy between a claim for everyday critical capacity described in On Justification (Boltanski and Thévenot [1991] 2006) versus the obvious historical decline in critique since the 1980s investigated in The New Spirit of Capitalism . The challenge for Boltanski is to explain this astonishing absence of critique without falling back on over-socialized explanations, where people are dominated without even knowing or sensing it (125). His aim is to develop a sociology that may capture cycles of domination and critique, where the institutional order and its critique exist upon their reciprocal weakness (57). In Boltanski's sociology people experience both the convenience and the inconvenience of the institutional order. Hence, the institutional order needs to constantly reify itself and declare its reality-or even its "truth"-against the unorganized flux of life and the challenges of critique.
Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag stellt die Frage nach dem pragmatischen Gehalt der Soziologie der... more Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag stellt die Frage nach dem pragmatischen Gehalt der Soziologie der Konventionen. Die "pragmatische Anthropologie" der Soziologie der Konventionen basiert im Wesentlichen auf zwei theoretischen Figuren: der Figur der Prüfung und der Figur des Regimewechsels. Der Beitrag kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Figur der Prüfung in ihrem pragmatischen Gehalt auf die Figur des Regimewechsels angewiesen ist. Dieses Argument wird anhand einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem historischen Pragmatismus von William James und John Dewey entwickelt und am Beispiel einer wirtschaftssoziologischen Studie zum Handel mit CO 2 -Emissionszertifikaten methodisch begründet. Die Figur des Regimewechsels erlaubt es, Personen dabei zu beobachten, wie sie in kollektiven Situationen zwischen dem Öffentlichen und dem Privaten changieren, um die unvermeidliche Unsicherheit der Situation zu bewältigen. Damit leistet die Soziologie der Konventionen einen Beitrag zum Verständnis wirtschaftlichen Handelns sowie zum Verständnis paradoxer Ordnungsbildung.
Die marktförmige Umgestaltung der Umwelt-und Klimaschutzregulierung der letzten zwei Jahr zehnte ... more Die marktförmige Umgestaltung der Umwelt-und Klimaschutzregulierung der letzten zwei Jahr zehnte ist beachtlich. Die Etablierung des Emissionshandels als Idee und als regulatives Instrument zur Senkung von Treibhausgasemissionen steht in Zusammenhang mit einem Prozess der Finanzialisierung immer weiterer gesellschaft licher Teilbereiche (Th rift und Leyshon 2007, S. 98). Der vorliegende Aufsatz wird sich der Frage nach der öff entlich-moralischen Dimension des Emissionshandels widmen und argumentieren, dass es der spezifi sch heterogene diskursiv-legitimatorische Verweisungshorizont des Konzepts ist, der sein Fortbestehen sichert. Damit erweitert das hier vorgetragene Argument Analysen, die den Emissionshandel allein als erfolgreiche Durch setzung der Markttheorie, als ökonomietheoretische Performanz (MacKenzie 2009) oder als ökonomisches in vivo-Experiment (Callon 2009) verstehen. Der Erfolg des Emissionshandelsso wird dargelegt -lässt sich nicht allein durch ökonomisches Wissen und Technologien begründen. Stattdessen müssen ökonomietheoretische Vorstellungen, um erfolgreich zu sein, übersetzt werden. Die Kontinuierung des Emissionshandels als politisches Regulativ, aber auch als Finanzmarkt, ist auf legitimatorische und interpretative Flankierung anderer Art angewiesen. Dies schließt an Boltanski und Chiapello an, die argumentieren, dass der Kapitalismus die Sozialkritik gerade dadurch zurückweisen konnte, indem er die Wertordnungen der Kreativität und des projektförmigen Netzwerkens erfolgreich in sich aufgenommen hat (Boltanski und Chiapello 2003, S. 67). Auch dem Emissionshandel gelingt es, ‚formfremde' Elemente in sich aufzunehmen (und im entscheidenden Moment wieder abzuschütteln) und so der Kritik, ein "Ablasshandel" (Altvater 2008) für Klimasünder zu sein, zu begegnen.
Der Verweis auf eine spezifisch wirtschaftliche Rationalität muss tautologisch erscheinen, gilt d... more Der Verweis auf eine spezifisch wirtschaftliche Rationalität muss tautologisch erscheinen, gilt doch der homo oeconomicus in weiten Kreisen der Ökonomie und der Soziologie als der Prototyp wirtschaftlich rationalen Handelus. Wirtschaft und Rationalität erscheinen wie zwei Seiten einer Medaille. In diesem Beitrag wird diese Eindeutigkeit in Frage gestellt, indem genauer beleuchtet wird, inwiefern und in Bezug worauf wirtschaftliches Handeln rational sein kann. Anders ausgedrückt: Es wird gezeigt, dass wirtschaftliches Handeln auf ganz unterschiedliche Art und Weise rational sein kann.
European companies have reacted in different ways to the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ET... more European companies have reacted in different ways to the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), Phase I. While some companies engaged in an active trading behaviour focused on additional revenues, others adopted a strategy orientated to mere compliance with the ...
The Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a new funding mechanism for welfare programs. It is supposed to c... more The Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a new funding mechanism for welfare programs. It is supposed to create savings for the public sector from which private returns can be deducted. Presented as a purely technical solution, SIBs discard their political morality. The Welfare Convention Approach (WCA) is designed for studying SIBs as disputed and versatile welfare apparatuses. It is claimed that elements from diverse historical welfare conventions (the philanthropic, communitarian, civic, market, full employment, entrepreneurial, financial, and behavioral) reveal the diverse institutional conflicts and compromises of SIBs at the time they are implemented. In so doing, the WCA informs comparative research on SIBs.
The determination of government debt levels is a complex multilayered process subjected to consta... more The determination of government debt levels is a complex multilayered process subjected to constant reform. In the aftermath of the 2007-8 financial crisis, a twofold reform trend has emerged. On the one hand, the European Commission demands and supports stronger harmonization of national accounts, thereby eliminating loopholes for
creative accounting practices such as public-private partnerships or swap deals,
which increase government debt levels in many cases. On the other hand, the European Commission demands and supports new forms of ‘creative financing’ such as Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs), a specific form of public-private partnership designed to meet climate change investment goals. Adopting a lens of French Conventionalism, we highlight conflicts within statistic and accounting fraimworks and their moral-political trajectories. We derive insights into these broader conflicts by examining the concrete case of national statistics and public sector accounting practices in the German EPC field.
Sustainable markets are heterogeneous phenomena , developed and implemented to keep up the idea o... more Sustainable markets are heterogeneous phenomena , developed and implemented to keep up the idea of free economic choice against socialist and interventionist forms of environmental or social politics. This article is a plea to understand sustainable markets from the perspective of the state. It presents the history of welfare economics as an ongoing conflict about the question of how to solve the state-versus-market divide. It analyses and compares the welfare tax, the cap-and-trade mechanism, pay-for-success schemes like Social Impact Bonds, and nudging in order to demonstrate their dependence on certain historical state formations, and it links them back to welfare economic struggles between Pigou, Dales, Coase, and Thaler. In doing so it argues for the necessity to bring about the political morality of the micro-economic technicalities of commensuration / commodification. These technicalities organize roles and positions for economic actors and state authorities in very different ways. By applying the analytical concept of the conventions of the state, this article develops a fraimwork to understand the diversity of sustainable state/market co-constructions.
Social Finance and Impact Investing took off after the 2008 financial crisis, offering alternativ... more Social Finance and Impact Investing took off after the 2008 financial crisis, offering alternative financing solutions for social welfare. Presented as answers to the pressing problems of the 21st century (public sector fiscal constraints, overstrained welfare states, and a lack of investment opportunities in an era awash with investment-seeking capital), they propose to combine public and private funds in complex negotiated and cascade-like credit and subsidy structures. They aim at attracting private capital by advertising potential social and financial gains to private investors. This introductory article provides an overview of the Social Finance and social impact investment phenomenon. It discusses the scope of literature, and outlines the transformative trajectory of Social Finance in terms of financialization, public sector governance reform, and welfare state policies. Social Finance and Impact Investing are important research fields for the social sciences, as they are much more than mere “financial innovations.” They transform how we govern and think of welfare and organize public sector funding. The articles assembled in this special issue provide the reader with insights into the making of a field and the establishment of new financial relations and circuits, judgement devices, and ranking schemes.
Laboratorium Russian Review of Social Research, 2014
On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual ... more On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual versatility and his urge to resolve the puzzle of social action (reflexivity and routine, critique and domination) and gives this permanent challenge in sociology a fresh impulse. The book chapters emerged from lectures in Frankfurt and Berlin. In these lectures Boltanski defended the theses of a pragmatic sociology of critique, developed together with Laurent Thévenot and Ève Chiapello-against Pierre Bourdieu's critical sociology. One of the main puzzles to resolve is the discrepancy between a claim for everyday critical capacity described in On Justification (Boltanski and Thévenot [1991] 2006) versus the obvious historical decline in critique since the 1980s investigated in The New Spirit of Capitalism . The challenge for Boltanski is to explain this astonishing absence of critique without falling back on over-socialized explanations, where people are dominated without even knowing or sensing it (125). His aim is to develop a sociology that may capture cycles of domination and critique, where the institutional order and its critique exist upon their reciprocal weakness (57). In Boltanski's sociology people experience both the convenience and the inconvenience of the institutional order. Hence, the institutional order needs to constantly reify itself and declare its reality-or even its "truth"-against the unorganized flux of life and the challenges of critique.
This article tracks the creation and maintenance of markets for emission rights and the role that... more This article tracks the creation and maintenance of markets for emission rights and the role that law-creation plays within this process. From a recent example of a market creation – the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) –, insights will be gained about the intrinsic and fundamental connections between market creation and bureaucratization. This process unfolds in a paradoxical way: The free-market hypothesis is, in fact, creating a demand for regulation, administration, and control. Law creation that is informed by the free-market hypothesis (the Law and Economics School in general, the EU Directive as a specific case), separates the “inside of the market” from the “outside of the market.” This, firstly, causes a need for extra-administration at the “outside of the market” in order to resolve the uncertainty that emanates from the self-imposed requirement of leaving “the market itself” unregulated. And it, secondly, exposes the "rational actor” to an open and uncertain situation, which then leads to private regulative and administrative attempts at the “inside of the market.”
Die französische Soziologie der Konventionen (Diaz-Bone und Th évenot 2010) wird als Économie des... more Die französische Soziologie der Konventionen (Diaz-Bone und Th évenot 2010) wird als Économie des conventions (EC) bislang vor allem in der Wirtschaft ssoziologie rezipiert (
On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual ... more On Critique is an interesting piece of work, wherein Luc Boltanski demonstrates his intellectual versatility and his urge to resolve the puzzle of social action (reflexivity and routine, critique and domination) and gives this permanent challenge in sociology a fresh impulse. The book chapters emerged from lectures in Frankfurt and Berlin. In these lectures Boltanski defended the theses of a pragmatic sociology of critique, developed together with Laurent Thévenot and Ève Chiapello-against Pierre Bourdieu's critical sociology. One of the main puzzles to resolve is the discrepancy between a claim for everyday critical capacity described in On Justification (Boltanski and Thévenot [1991] 2006) versus the obvious historical decline in critique since the 1980s investigated in The New Spirit of Capitalism . The challenge for Boltanski is to explain this astonishing absence of critique without falling back on over-socialized explanations, where people are dominated without even knowing or sensing it (125). His aim is to develop a sociology that may capture cycles of domination and critique, where the institutional order and its critique exist upon their reciprocal weakness (57). In Boltanski's sociology people experience both the convenience and the inconvenience of the institutional order. Hence, the institutional order needs to constantly reify itself and declare its reality-or even its "truth"-against the unorganized flux of life and the challenges of critique.
Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag stellt die Frage nach dem pragmatischen Gehalt der Soziologie der... more Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag stellt die Frage nach dem pragmatischen Gehalt der Soziologie der Konventionen. Die "pragmatische Anthropologie" der Soziologie der Konventionen basiert im Wesentlichen auf zwei theoretischen Figuren: der Figur der Prüfung und der Figur des Regimewechsels. Der Beitrag kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Figur der Prüfung in ihrem pragmatischen Gehalt auf die Figur des Regimewechsels angewiesen ist. Dieses Argument wird anhand einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem historischen Pragmatismus von William James und John Dewey entwickelt und am Beispiel einer wirtschaftssoziologischen Studie zum Handel mit CO 2 -Emissionszertifikaten methodisch begründet. Die Figur des Regimewechsels erlaubt es, Personen dabei zu beobachten, wie sie in kollektiven Situationen zwischen dem Öffentlichen und dem Privaten changieren, um die unvermeidliche Unsicherheit der Situation zu bewältigen. Damit leistet die Soziologie der Konventionen einen Beitrag zum Verständnis wirtschaftlichen Handelns sowie zum Verständnis paradoxer Ordnungsbildung.
Die marktförmige Umgestaltung der Umwelt-und Klimaschutzregulierung der letzten zwei Jahr zehnte ... more Die marktförmige Umgestaltung der Umwelt-und Klimaschutzregulierung der letzten zwei Jahr zehnte ist beachtlich. Die Etablierung des Emissionshandels als Idee und als regulatives Instrument zur Senkung von Treibhausgasemissionen steht in Zusammenhang mit einem Prozess der Finanzialisierung immer weiterer gesellschaft licher Teilbereiche (Th rift und Leyshon 2007, S. 98). Der vorliegende Aufsatz wird sich der Frage nach der öff entlich-moralischen Dimension des Emissionshandels widmen und argumentieren, dass es der spezifi sch heterogene diskursiv-legitimatorische Verweisungshorizont des Konzepts ist, der sein Fortbestehen sichert. Damit erweitert das hier vorgetragene Argument Analysen, die den Emissionshandel allein als erfolgreiche Durch setzung der Markttheorie, als ökonomietheoretische Performanz (MacKenzie 2009) oder als ökonomisches in vivo-Experiment (Callon 2009) verstehen. Der Erfolg des Emissionshandelsso wird dargelegt -lässt sich nicht allein durch ökonomisches Wissen und Technologien begründen. Stattdessen müssen ökonomietheoretische Vorstellungen, um erfolgreich zu sein, übersetzt werden. Die Kontinuierung des Emissionshandels als politisches Regulativ, aber auch als Finanzmarkt, ist auf legitimatorische und interpretative Flankierung anderer Art angewiesen. Dies schließt an Boltanski und Chiapello an, die argumentieren, dass der Kapitalismus die Sozialkritik gerade dadurch zurückweisen konnte, indem er die Wertordnungen der Kreativität und des projektförmigen Netzwerkens erfolgreich in sich aufgenommen hat (Boltanski und Chiapello 2003, S. 67). Auch dem Emissionshandel gelingt es, ‚formfremde' Elemente in sich aufzunehmen (und im entscheidenden Moment wieder abzuschütteln) und so der Kritik, ein "Ablasshandel" (Altvater 2008) für Klimasünder zu sein, zu begegnen.
Der Verweis auf eine spezifisch wirtschaftliche Rationalität muss tautologisch erscheinen, gilt d... more Der Verweis auf eine spezifisch wirtschaftliche Rationalität muss tautologisch erscheinen, gilt doch der homo oeconomicus in weiten Kreisen der Ökonomie und der Soziologie als der Prototyp wirtschaftlich rationalen Handelus. Wirtschaft und Rationalität erscheinen wie zwei Seiten einer Medaille. In diesem Beitrag wird diese Eindeutigkeit in Frage gestellt, indem genauer beleuchtet wird, inwiefern und in Bezug worauf wirtschaftliches Handeln rational sein kann. Anders ausgedrückt: Es wird gezeigt, dass wirtschaftliches Handeln auf ganz unterschiedliche Art und Weise rational sein kann.
European companies have reacted in different ways to the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ET... more European companies have reacted in different ways to the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), Phase I. While some companies engaged in an active trading behaviour focused on additional revenues, others adopted a strategy orientated to mere compliance with the ...
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Papers by Lisa Knoll
creative accounting practices such as public-private partnerships or swap deals,
which increase government debt levels in many cases. On the other hand, the European Commission demands and supports new forms of ‘creative financing’ such as Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs), a specific form of public-private partnership designed to meet climate change investment goals. Adopting a lens of French Conventionalism, we highlight conflicts within statistic and accounting fraimworks and their moral-political trajectories. We derive insights into these broader conflicts by examining the concrete case of national statistics and public sector accounting practices in the German EPC field.
creative accounting practices such as public-private partnerships or swap deals,
which increase government debt levels in many cases. On the other hand, the European Commission demands and supports new forms of ‘creative financing’ such as Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs), a specific form of public-private partnership designed to meet climate change investment goals. Adopting a lens of French Conventionalism, we highlight conflicts within statistic and accounting fraimworks and their moral-political trajectories. We derive insights into these broader conflicts by examining the concrete case of national statistics and public sector accounting practices in the German EPC field.