Senior Research Seminar with Dr Jessica Sklair (University of Cambridge)

Development on credit: For-profit development imaginaries and the financialisation of philanthropy in BrazilDr Jessica Sklair (University of Cambridge)

The financialisation of the global economy has seen a shift away from productive capacity towards financial speculation as the driver of wealth accumulation. In recent years, parallel shifts in the realm of international development have seen the emergence of for-profit development financing models. Philanthropists have been key to these processes in the development sector, heralding a move away from charitable grant-making towards for-profit ‘impact investment’ strategies. This talk explores how these shifts are reconfiguring ideas about development and its subjects in the Brazilian context. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork among philanthropists, impact fund managers and philanthropic intermediaries in São Paulo, I argue that the financialisation of philanthropy has seen the emergence of new development imaginaries. Where earlier market-based approaches to development were posited on the poor’s entrepreneurial capacity to carve out flexible, productive markets for their own benefit, impact investing sees development subjects re-cast, into debt-based consumers tasked with the generation of profit for financial investors.