As part of the City and Regional Planning department’s Colloquium Series, Lisa Knoll, researcher at the University of Hamburg and the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, will be presenting her research on social impact bonds and their asset to funding the welfare state. Lecture will begin at 12:20pm, following with a talk-back session.
Abstract:
Social impact bonds are an innovative funding mechanism of the welfare state. Financial capital is asked to help the welfare state in times of austerity to find new sources to fund social welfare programs, and the welfare state is asked to help the financial sector to find new, good, and profitable investment opportunities in times of an investment crisis (investment seeking capital has difficulties in finding enough diversified investment opportunities). Social impact bonds have been accused of “Neoliberalism,” but they are also celebrated as a win-win constellation, and they find support in social democratic and conservative parties. They can thus be understood as a critical and a criticized movement moralizing “the market” – that is usually considered to be anti-moral. The French “Sociology of Critique” (a theory by Luc Boltanski, Laurent Thévenot, and Ève Chiapello) will thus be used to shed light on critical debates on social impact bonds in order to identify different notions of “welfare.”
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