Abstract
In this presentation, I will be presenting preliminary findings from my dissertation research focused on sustainable finance in Norway. I have been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo since September 2022: In the first nine months, I focused on semi-structured interviews with financial professionals and civil society representatives, as well as participation at public conferences and events. Since June 2023, I have been undertaking participant-observation at a sustainability-oriented asset manager.
As an anthropologist, my research focuses on understanding the motivations and challenges of sustainability-oriented financial institutions and situating them within the financial industry and the rest of the society, while also looking at how individual professionals contribute to the creation of their institutions as such.
My preliminary findings point to the prevalence of intra-institutional tensions in the conduct of sustainable investing activities. There are many strands of tensions within each financial institution, which makes it harder to conduct investment and active ownership activities aligned with institutions’ sustainability goals. For instance, different teams define sustainability differently, and diverge on whether specific activities are useful and needed for sustainability transition (e.g., deep sea mining or reliance on China for rare earth minerals). Or, an institution operating internationally might have to uphold two opposite stances in two different markets. I will be presenting a number of intra-institutional tensions and show how they might be influencing sustainability-related activities of investors.
In addition, there is also an overarching tension for the sustainable finance movement—finance has not given up on its short-term focus on profitability. When short-term profits clash with long-term sustainability goals, there appears an impasse which the financial professionals try to overcome through a number of tactics, such as ambiguity around time-frames or pushing the responsibility to regulation and law. I will also present on how financial professionals situate law and regulation in talking about their own sustainability activities.
In presenting empirical findings from my fieldwork, I hope to get inspiration on theoretical framing and follow up on my first presentation here in November 2022.
Bio
Nazli Azergun is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. Her dissertation research is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork at a Northern European asset manager and focuses on the internal tensions within the organization around the concept of sustainability, visions for achieving sustainability as an investor, and different teams’ and professionals’ role in the process.
Prior to her PhD, Nazli completed an MA degree in Global Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara as a Fulbright scholar. Her thesis was based on short-term ethnographic research at an income-sharing community in rural US and focused on this community’s market participation strategies.
Her writings appeared in Economic Affairs, Journal of Cultural Economy, Economic Anthropology, and Journal for the Anthropology of North America.
Zoom
This event will be hybrid: in the meeting room ‘Lødrups kjeller’ for all who are able to join us physically in Oslo, and on Zoom for everybody else.
Open to all interested
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https://uio.zoom.us/j/64095505844?pwd=WU9VUmJZMHZ2VEJCUVdueHhmTklXUT09
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