Dr Jacob Broom1
1Murdoch University, Australia
Biography:
Jacob Broom is a fellow of the Indo-Pacific Research Centre and lecturer in politics and policy at the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Murdoch University. Jacob’s research examines the political economy of social and development policies, with a focus on financialisation. Jacob’s previous research has examined social impact bonds, and it is published in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, New Political Economy, and Global Social Policy.
Abstract:
My research has focused on forms of social impact investment – first, social impact bonds in Australia, then gender-lens investing. Both involve financial investors aiming to make a close to market-rate return while also achieving a social good, whether that be funding community service programs, supporting women-owned and -led companies, or channelling money toward microbusinesses in developing countries. They also involve the state underwriting financial risk. When these projects began, financialisation was conceived as a broader macroeconomic and political process that contextualised experiments in social and development policy, which would inevitably redistribute wealth and power to financial interests. My research problems – understanding the emergence, development, and politics of social impact interventions – were shaped to fit into the broader story of the financialisation of the global political economy. However, focusing more closely on the dynamics of specific investment fields inspired a different take on financialisation which emphasised the social practices that produce and reproduce it. My research suggests that these can be rather mundane – conversations at conferences, phone calls between colleagues, and the establishing of social networks between people with financial expertise who switch the focus of their work to ‘altruistic’ projects. The turn to private finance in development and social policy, then, should not be taken for granted as a function of the financialisation of the global economy.