Download Where is in the interaction of forms of capital?

Where is sustainability in the
interaction of forms of
capital?
Rethinking Capitals ICAEW 2014
Professor Kathryn Haynes
[email protected]
The Challenge
• Why the need to rethink capitals?
• Which types and aspects of capital are typically
missing from contemporary debates? Or privileged
above others?
• Does the way we characterise capital serve some
interest groups and exclude others?
• What could an inter-disciplinary or philosophical
approach to examining these issues look like?
Why the need to rethink capitals?
• While financial capital still dominates global capital
markets, its interaction with natural capital, through
corporate use of natural resources, has become a key
part of sustainability reporting and measurement.
• Imperative of global warming and unsustainable
practices
• How do capitals interact with each other?
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Sustainable development
Defined by the Brundtland Report (UN, WCED, 1987) as
a system of development which:
‘Meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs’
Introduces elements of:
Inter- and intra – generational equity
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Equity
• Intragenerational equity is concerned with equity
between people of the same generation.
• distribution of resources and justice between nations,
justice within nations
• Intergenerational equity is concerned with equity
between present and future generations
• moral obligation to future generations
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Which types and aspects of capital are
typically missing from contemporary
debates? Or privileged above others?
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Does the way we characterise capital
serve some interest groups and
exclude others?
• Inherent power relations
between multiple actors in
interaction of capitals
• Problems of equity between
global north and south
e.g. land rights, indigenous
peoples, women, poor
• Focus of some capitals is on western elites
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Example – Women’s Major Group at Rio
+20 summit
• United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development, 2012
• The Future We Want – the Future Women Want
• Participant observation and documentary
analysis
• Major groups: business and industry; children and
youth; farmers; indigenous peoples; local authorities;
NGOs; scientific and technical community; women;
workers and trade unions
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Visions of SD
• Rio+20 UN theme was ‘green
economy in context of sustainable
development and poverty
eradication’
• Criticism from Women’s Major Group: too far separated
from the context of sustainable development and
poverty eradication, and will be ‘misused to greenwash existing unsustainable economic practices that
lead to inequities and infringe on the rights of effected
peoples and future generations, because it does not
fundamentally and adequately question and transform
the current economic paradigm’
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Social Justice?
• Rio+20 outcome document refers
to ‘social justice’ only once
• In Women Major Group - discussion of social justice
resonates with intra-generational equity within
sustainable development: ‘building societies based on
respect for human rights of all people, ensuring social
protection, sustainable livelihoods and environmental
security, and fair distribution of the earth’s natural and
economic resources – a world where economic, social
and environmental rights for women and men are fully
respected’.
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Interaction with accounting & business
• Do we need to account for capitals differently? How
much does measurement constrain us?
• Women’s Major group recommended ‘specific cross
cutting goals, targets and indicators on gender equality
in all spheres of society’
• Critiqued the current use of performance indicators that
are ‘socially and environmentally blind’ e.g. GDP
• Critiqued current economic measures which ‘value
nature at zero’… where ‘women’s unpaid labour is
invisible’
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What could an inter-disciplinary or
philosophical approach to examining
these issues look like?
• Pierre Bourdieu – French sociologist and philosopher
• Identifies three fundamental forms of capital:
• Economic – the power to keep economic
necessity at arms length
• Cultural – embodied, objectified, institutional
• Social – actual or potential resources linked
networks of culturally, politically or
economically useful relations
Convertible and transmutable into each
other and into broader symbolic capital
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Bourdieu and the ‘field of power’ –
global capitalism
• Bourdieu does not specifically evaluate natural or
human capital
• The ‘field of power’ is the ‘struggles among the holders
of different forms of power, a gaming space in which
those agents and institutions possessing enough
specific capital (economic or cultural capital in
particular) to be able to occupy the dominant positions
within the irrespective fields confront each other using
strategies aimed at preserving or transforming these
relations of power.’ (Bourdieu,1996: pg. 264)
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Interaction of capitals and
sustainability
• Dominant agents, notably corporations, control agenda
setting and policy debates in the sustainability context,
such that some forms of capital, and owners of capital,
are marginalised.
• Without an interaction of capitals, how can inter and
intra-generational equity be achieved?
• Implications for those without access to forms of social,
cultural and economic capital, such as inter alia,
indigenous peoples, women, and the poor in parts of
the developed and developing world, whose natural
and human capital is also being eroded.
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Where is sustainability in the
interaction of forms of
capital?
Rethinking Capitals ICAEW 2014
Professor Kathryn Haynes
[email protected]