Pub Date : 2023-06-27DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231182431
K. Otsuki
This article examines how and why values are created and contested in the process of development, using an example of development-induced displacement and resettlement in Mozambique. It pays particular attention to the social-material effects of compensation, provided as cash, resettlement housing, replacement land, and basic infrastructure. Drawing from field research on an urban resettlement project of the Limpopo National Park in Massingir district, the article shows that the compensation leads to commodification of livelihoods by reducing the original, largely social and cultural meaning of the livelihood to predominantly an economic one. This is because the provided housing and land for cultivation are standardised and infrastructure incurs cash payments and new labour arrangements. At the same time, the study elucidates processes by which experiencing displacement and resettlement – and cash and in-kind compensation given in this process and commodification that ensued – led the resettled people to reshape their livelihoods in such a way as to re-establish the familiar houses and organise a collective. Outcomes of this process are ambivalent, as they may accelerate uneven development. Yet, the article expounds that recognising this ambivalence at least opens space for deliberations about addressing the contested values of development.
{"title":"Contested values of development: Experiencing commodification of livelihoods through displacement and resettlement in Mozambique","authors":"K. Otsuki","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231182431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231182431","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how and why values are created and contested in the process of development, using an example of development-induced displacement and resettlement in Mozambique. It pays particular attention to the social-material effects of compensation, provided as cash, resettlement housing, replacement land, and basic infrastructure. Drawing from field research on an urban resettlement project of the Limpopo National Park in Massingir district, the article shows that the compensation leads to commodification of livelihoods by reducing the original, largely social and cultural meaning of the livelihood to predominantly an economic one. This is because the provided housing and land for cultivation are standardised and infrastructure incurs cash payments and new labour arrangements. At the same time, the study elucidates processes by which experiencing displacement and resettlement – and cash and in-kind compensation given in this process and commodification that ensued – led the resettled people to reshape their livelihoods in such a way as to re-establish the familiar houses and organise a collective. Outcomes of this process are ambivalent, as they may accelerate uneven development. Yet, the article expounds that recognising this ambivalence at least opens space for deliberations about addressing the contested values of development.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72805789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-27DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231181126
Ioana Jipa-Muşat, Martha Prevezer, Liam Campling
Processes of outsourcing and offshoring have driven the changing spatial divisions of labour through foreign investment and development of peripheral regions into key offshore destinations for business services. This paper focuses on the role of elites, transnational and domestic, in the transformation of Romania into a major business services offshoring location in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) over the last two decades. The paper reveals the role of elite agency in connecting domestic resources to business services global production networks (GPNs) in order to drive domestic institutional transformation. A lot has been written about the agency of labour; yet there is a gap in our understanding of the agency of elites, specifically how transnational elites articulate with other elites at the national-, meso- and micro-level and produce institutional changes. Drawing on literature on enclave creation and dual economies, the paper illustrates how the alliance between domestic and transnational elites shaped transformation across the sector by implementing labour market flexibilisation and by crafting a ‘sound’ business environment in terms of infrastructure, investment incentives and bureaucratic framework to emulate institutional conditions of the home country. The development of the Romanian business services sector into an ‘enclave economy’ has become dependent on collaborative networks with domestic universities and intermediary organisations, which played a key role in facilitating foreign investment attraction and linking domestic resources to the needs of multinational firms.
{"title":"Elite agency in the growth of offshore business services in Romania","authors":"Ioana Jipa-Muşat, Martha Prevezer, Liam Campling","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231181126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231181126","url":null,"abstract":"Processes of outsourcing and offshoring have driven the changing spatial divisions of labour through foreign investment and development of peripheral regions into key offshore destinations for business services. This paper focuses on the role of elites, transnational and domestic, in the transformation of Romania into a major business services offshoring location in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) over the last two decades. The paper reveals the role of elite agency in connecting domestic resources to business services global production networks (GPNs) in order to drive domestic institutional transformation. A lot has been written about the agency of labour; yet there is a gap in our understanding of the agency of elites, specifically how transnational elites articulate with other elites at the national-, meso- and micro-level and produce institutional changes. Drawing on literature on enclave creation and dual economies, the paper illustrates how the alliance between domestic and transnational elites shaped transformation across the sector by implementing labour market flexibilisation and by crafting a ‘sound’ business environment in terms of infrastructure, investment incentives and bureaucratic framework to emulate institutional conditions of the home country. The development of the Romanian business services sector into an ‘enclave economy’ has become dependent on collaborative networks with domestic universities and intermediary organisations, which played a key role in facilitating foreign investment attraction and linking domestic resources to the needs of multinational firms.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"365 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75082656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-20DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231182428
Julie T. Miao, Hyung Min Kim, N. Phelps
State entrepreneurialism in response to external market stimuli has a state intrapreneurialism counterpart – the entrepreneurialism found within public institutions. In moving beyond the case of Singapore from which the idea was proposed, this paper develops the concept of state intrapreneurialism by injecting a greater sense of the political and territorial heterogeneity of, and competition within, national states that fracture the identification of needs, the crafting of policy narratives, and the forging of domestic and international networks. With reference to the case of South Korea, this paper illustrates how state intrapreneurialism has generated domestic and international markets and reputation in the ICT-assisted city management domain despite elements of competition among public agencies. The case raises broader questions for future research on the relational geographies of politics and bureaucracy in stimulating or stifling state intrapreneurialism.
{"title":"Competition and coordination in state intrapreneurialism: The case of South Korea's export of urban expertise","authors":"Julie T. Miao, Hyung Min Kim, N. Phelps","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231182428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231182428","url":null,"abstract":"State entrepreneurialism in response to external market stimuli has a state intrapreneurialism counterpart – the entrepreneurialism found within public institutions. In moving beyond the case of Singapore from which the idea was proposed, this paper develops the concept of state intrapreneurialism by injecting a greater sense of the political and territorial heterogeneity of, and competition within, national states that fracture the identification of needs, the crafting of policy narratives, and the forging of domestic and international networks. With reference to the case of South Korea, this paper illustrates how state intrapreneurialism has generated domestic and international markets and reputation in the ICT-assisted city management domain despite elements of competition among public agencies. The case raises broader questions for future research on the relational geographies of politics and bureaucracy in stimulating or stifling state intrapreneurialism.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75790124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-15DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231178309
Robin Wright, Keavy McFadden
Tax increment financing (TIF) is a mechanism used by municipal governments throughout the United States to fund public and private urban development projects. This paper examines the trajectories of TIF in the state of California and the City of Chicago, where the expansion of TIF as a mechanism for publicly financed development is inextricable from disinvestments in social reproduction and the transformation of public funding for K-12 education. Taking seriously the divergent paths of TIF in each case, we argue that the framework of social reproduction helps expand the scope of TIF as a “policy in place,” bringing into view other path and place-dependent factors that shape the adaptation and implementation of public finance mechanisms. Bridging the literature on urban policy and feminist political economy, we suggest that scholars must investigate the place-specific entanglements of social reproduction and public finance if we are to understand how mechanisms such as TIF are adopted, expanded, or curtailed within the broader framework of neoliberal urban governance. In making such an intervention, we expand on calls to attend to the ways public finance can heighten or mitigate economic inequality.
{"title":"Social reproduction and public finance: A comparative study of TIF in California and Chicago","authors":"Robin Wright, Keavy McFadden","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231178309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231178309","url":null,"abstract":"Tax increment financing (TIF) is a mechanism used by municipal governments throughout the United States to fund public and private urban development projects. This paper examines the trajectories of TIF in the state of California and the City of Chicago, where the expansion of TIF as a mechanism for publicly financed development is inextricable from disinvestments in social reproduction and the transformation of public funding for K-12 education. Taking seriously the divergent paths of TIF in each case, we argue that the framework of social reproduction helps expand the scope of TIF as a “policy in place,” bringing into view other path and place-dependent factors that shape the adaptation and implementation of public finance mechanisms. Bridging the literature on urban policy and feminist political economy, we suggest that scholars must investigate the place-specific entanglements of social reproduction and public finance if we are to understand how mechanisms such as TIF are adopted, expanded, or curtailed within the broader framework of neoliberal urban governance. In making such an intervention, we expand on calls to attend to the ways public finance can heighten or mitigate economic inequality.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83185311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231172984
Linda Weidenstedt, A. Geissinger, Birgit Leick, Nabeel Nazeer
In this paper, we identify when and why migrant gig workers experience liminality in the socio-spatial context of food delivery in the Swedish gig economy. We analyse qualitative interviews and informal conversations with food delivery workers in Stockholm through the lens of the territory-place-scale-network (TPSN) framework as developed by Bob Jessop, Neil Brenner and Martin Jones. We find that workers are challenged to deal with triple liminality regarding their work identities, workplaces and work organisation through platforms. Focusing on liminality as a central aspect of gig work, we further find that despite having little worker agency, some of the study participants engage in what we call liminal agency, that is actively pursuing possibilities for progress in uncertain states of in-betweenness. By unpacking the liminal dynamics that especially migrant food delivery riders are confronted with in their daily working lives, this study contributes to the debate on the migrant gig economy, the spatial turn in organisation studies and efforts from human geography to understand agency in precarious gig work.
{"title":"Betwixt and between: Triple liminality and liminal agency in the Swedish gig economy","authors":"Linda Weidenstedt, A. Geissinger, Birgit Leick, Nabeel Nazeer","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231172984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231172984","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we identify when and why migrant gig workers experience liminality in the socio-spatial context of food delivery in the Swedish gig economy. We analyse qualitative interviews and informal conversations with food delivery workers in Stockholm through the lens of the territory-place-scale-network (TPSN) framework as developed by Bob Jessop, Neil Brenner and Martin Jones. We find that workers are challenged to deal with triple liminality regarding their work identities, workplaces and work organisation through platforms. Focusing on liminality as a central aspect of gig work, we further find that despite having little worker agency, some of the study participants engage in what we call liminal agency, that is actively pursuing possibilities for progress in uncertain states of in-betweenness. By unpacking the liminal dynamics that especially migrant food delivery riders are confronted with in their daily working lives, this study contributes to the debate on the migrant gig economy, the spatial turn in organisation studies and efforts from human geography to understand agency in precarious gig work.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"106 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80740942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-30DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231176553
S. Ponte, Valentina De Marchi, M. Bettiol, Eleonora Di Maria
Much of the literature on environmental sustainability in global value chains (GVCs) focuses on how ‘lead firms’ (usually global buyers or retailers) can improve the environmental conditions of production among their various layers of suppliers. This approach focuses on the vertical governance dynamics of environmental upgrading along with GVCs. In our contribution, we emphasize the role of horizontal governance as a driver that underpins environmental upgrading processes. These horizontal elements include institutional support, pressure from civil society groups and political dynamics at the local level – which have been relatively overlooked in this literature so far. We examine environmental upgrading in Italian wine value chains, focusing on the fast-growing but environmentally-contested Prosecco and Valpolicella districts. Our analysis suggests that firms within the same industry may follow different processes of environmental upgrading – through certification, going ‘back to tradition’, technological innovation and/or as an articulation of local politics – also depending on their size. We conclude that horizontal governance is playing a more important role than previously thought in shaping environmental upgrading and provide some suggestions for future research in this realm.
{"title":"The horizontal governance of environmental upgrading: Lessons from the Prosecco and Valpolicella wine value chains in Italy","authors":"S. Ponte, Valentina De Marchi, M. Bettiol, Eleonora Di Maria","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231176553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231176553","url":null,"abstract":"Much of the literature on environmental sustainability in global value chains (GVCs) focuses on how ‘lead firms’ (usually global buyers or retailers) can improve the environmental conditions of production among their various layers of suppliers. This approach focuses on the vertical governance dynamics of environmental upgrading along with GVCs. In our contribution, we emphasize the role of horizontal governance as a driver that underpins environmental upgrading processes. These horizontal elements include institutional support, pressure from civil society groups and political dynamics at the local level – which have been relatively overlooked in this literature so far. We examine environmental upgrading in Italian wine value chains, focusing on the fast-growing but environmentally-contested Prosecco and Valpolicella districts. Our analysis suggests that firms within the same industry may follow different processes of environmental upgrading – through certification, going ‘back to tradition’, technological innovation and/or as an articulation of local politics – also depending on their size. We conclude that horizontal governance is playing a more important role than previously thought in shaping environmental upgrading and provide some suggestions for future research in this realm.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89712769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231168396
L. Johnson, Tahira Shariff Mohamed, I. Scoones, M. Taye
Amidst climatic and economic volatility, agricultural development and climate adaptation policies have increasingly turned to weather microinsurance to manage uncertainties, particularly in dryland pastoral and agricultural settings. While the political embrace of insurance has been cause for concern amongst those who fear insurance will undermine embedded coping mechanisms and moral economies, economists have puzzled over low insurance adoption rates amongst target populations. This article argues for an approach that scrutinizes insurance in relation to dynamic social practices and norms for responding to uncertainty. We employ this approach to investigate pastoralists’ encounters with index-based livestock insurance in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Drawing on interview, ethnographic, and survey data, we demonstrate how insurance is understood within larger moral economies and collective imaginaries for living with and managing uncertainty in the drylands. Relational understandings shape pastoralists’ participation in risk-sharing arrangements, collective and individual decisions about livestock insurance purchase, and eventual uses of insurance payouts. Payouts also support a broad array of social reproductive purposes and investments in social and political life. As we conclude, these findings upset the binary between formal and informal insurance, revealing how “formal” index insurance must be negotiated with embedded social affiliations, rights, obligations, and understandings of uncertainty.
{"title":"Uncertainty in the drylands: Rethinking in/formal insurance from pastoral East Africa","authors":"L. Johnson, Tahira Shariff Mohamed, I. Scoones, M. Taye","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231168396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231168396","url":null,"abstract":"Amidst climatic and economic volatility, agricultural development and climate adaptation policies have increasingly turned to weather microinsurance to manage uncertainties, particularly in dryland pastoral and agricultural settings. While the political embrace of insurance has been cause for concern amongst those who fear insurance will undermine embedded coping mechanisms and moral economies, economists have puzzled over low insurance adoption rates amongst target populations. This article argues for an approach that scrutinizes insurance in relation to dynamic social practices and norms for responding to uncertainty. We employ this approach to investigate pastoralists’ encounters with index-based livestock insurance in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Drawing on interview, ethnographic, and survey data, we demonstrate how insurance is understood within larger moral economies and collective imaginaries for living with and managing uncertainty in the drylands. Relational understandings shape pastoralists’ participation in risk-sharing arrangements, collective and individual decisions about livestock insurance purchase, and eventual uses of insurance payouts. Payouts also support a broad array of social reproductive purposes and investments in social and political life. As we conclude, these findings upset the binary between formal and informal insurance, revealing how “formal” index insurance must be negotiated with embedded social affiliations, rights, obligations, and understandings of uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83016492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-22DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231166953
Shu-Mei Huang, Lijin Yao
This research attends to how urban tenants bring matong (toilets in the form of urine buckets)—which are a material, semiotic, and marketable piece of infrastructure—into the debates over the remaking of a heritage district in Hongkou, Shanghai. Challenges abound for the site, which is occupied by prewar buildings where Jewish refugees found shelter during the war and more than 10 thousand Chinese tenants moved in after the Jews left. Until 2020, the dilapidated buildings accommodated an aging population of tenants who wish to stay relevant to the redevelopment vision of Shanghai and a variety of community business, including urban waste recycling. To find a crack in the state-led, neoliberal system, the tenants managed to exercise infrapolitics—an everyday form of resistance—over an urban infrastructure that is of particular significance to their bio-well-being and beyond. We analyze a set of spatial politics on sanatory infrastructure in Hongkou to understand how the tenants are desperately capitalizing on their disadvantages and reassembling memories, waste, and housing inequality into something more promising from below. The theorization of infra-bio-urbanism upon toilets sheds light on the accumulating anxiety upon housing inequality and infrastructural mobility in globalizing cities in China and beyond.
{"title":"Right to toilets? infra-bio-urbanism over human waste, memories, and housing inequality","authors":"Shu-Mei Huang, Lijin Yao","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231166953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231166953","url":null,"abstract":"This research attends to how urban tenants bring matong (toilets in the form of urine buckets)—which are a material, semiotic, and marketable piece of infrastructure—into the debates over the remaking of a heritage district in Hongkou, Shanghai. Challenges abound for the site, which is occupied by prewar buildings where Jewish refugees found shelter during the war and more than 10 thousand Chinese tenants moved in after the Jews left. Until 2020, the dilapidated buildings accommodated an aging population of tenants who wish to stay relevant to the redevelopment vision of Shanghai and a variety of community business, including urban waste recycling. To find a crack in the state-led, neoliberal system, the tenants managed to exercise infrapolitics—an everyday form of resistance—over an urban infrastructure that is of particular significance to their bio-well-being and beyond. We analyze a set of spatial politics on sanatory infrastructure in Hongkou to understand how the tenants are desperately capitalizing on their disadvantages and reassembling memories, waste, and housing inequality into something more promising from below. The theorization of infra-bio-urbanism upon toilets sheds light on the accumulating anxiety upon housing inequality and infrastructural mobility in globalizing cities in China and beyond.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83406463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-10DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231174026
Michael McCanless
Alternative credit scores have become an increasingly important tool for lenders to assess risk and authorize investment in consumer debt. Using alternative data and processing techniques that leverage machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), these models are designed to bypass existing barriers to risk-based pricing, which is the idea that financial institutions offer different interest rates to consumers based on their likelihood of default. Through an algorithmic audit of one lender's (Upstart) credit scoring model, I find that alternative data, particularly whether an applicant has a bachelor's degree, strongly impacted loan outcomes. This raises important equity concerns about overhauling lending criteria via opaque models that restructure the logic of risk assessment. In following the logic of risk assessment generated by Upstart's model, I also audit three fintech-bank partnerships and examine the balance sheets of banks providing capital via Upstart's platform. This is done to demonstrate rising capital allocation to these types of loans at banks engaged in fintech-bank partnerships, in one case rising from 0.14% to 15.6% of the banks’ balance sheet over three years. My analysis shows that alternative credit scoring systems function as a key piece of calculative infrastructure, which allows some institutions to bypass barriers to risk-based pricing, and becomes an infrastructural site for tech startups to partner with financial institutions seeking out new sources of revenue.
{"title":"Banking on alternative credit scores: Auditing the calculative infrastructure of U.S. consumer lending","authors":"Michael McCanless","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231174026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231174026","url":null,"abstract":"Alternative credit scores have become an increasingly important tool for lenders to assess risk and authorize investment in consumer debt. Using alternative data and processing techniques that leverage machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), these models are designed to bypass existing barriers to risk-based pricing, which is the idea that financial institutions offer different interest rates to consumers based on their likelihood of default. Through an algorithmic audit of one lender's (Upstart) credit scoring model, I find that alternative data, particularly whether an applicant has a bachelor's degree, strongly impacted loan outcomes. This raises important equity concerns about overhauling lending criteria via opaque models that restructure the logic of risk assessment. In following the logic of risk assessment generated by Upstart's model, I also audit three fintech-bank partnerships and examine the balance sheets of banks providing capital via Upstart's platform. This is done to demonstrate rising capital allocation to these types of loans at banks engaged in fintech-bank partnerships, in one case rising from 0.14% to 15.6% of the banks’ balance sheet over three years. My analysis shows that alternative credit scoring systems function as a key piece of calculative infrastructure, which allows some institutions to bypass barriers to risk-based pricing, and becomes an infrastructural site for tech startups to partner with financial institutions seeking out new sources of revenue.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77131603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231167865
Sara Nelson, M. Ramana
This paper examines the shifting fortunes of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California to better understand how asset owners are dealing with an increasingly-significant problem in changing energy landscapes: the devaluation of large fixed capital assets. In 2016, Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced a Joint Proposal to retire the Diablo Canyon plant by 2025, the result of a negotiated compromise with labor unions, environmental and community groups. Heralded by many commentators as a model for “just transitions” in the energy sector, this agreement has lately been called into question as new subsidies and political coalitions have emerged to support for the plant's continued operation. This paper investigates the political and economic conditions for the Joint Proposal as an example of “negotiated devaluation,” aiming to understand why and how this strategy took shape, and what lessons it offers for other transition processes. Linking literatures on just transitions and devaluation in the energy sector, we show how negotiated devaluation may offer an emerging strategy for owners of energy assets to manage decline in a changing energy landscape. The case also demonstrates the political contingency of these coalitions and the transitions they subtend, and the limited dimensions of justice that might be affirmed in them.
{"title":"Managing decline: Devaluation and just transition at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant","authors":"Sara Nelson, M. Ramana","doi":"10.1177/0308518x231167865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231167865","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the shifting fortunes of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California to better understand how asset owners are dealing with an increasingly-significant problem in changing energy landscapes: the devaluation of large fixed capital assets. In 2016, Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced a Joint Proposal to retire the Diablo Canyon plant by 2025, the result of a negotiated compromise with labor unions, environmental and community groups. Heralded by many commentators as a model for “just transitions” in the energy sector, this agreement has lately been called into question as new subsidies and political coalitions have emerged to support for the plant's continued operation. This paper investigates the political and economic conditions for the Joint Proposal as an example of “negotiated devaluation,” aiming to understand why and how this strategy took shape, and what lessons it offers for other transition processes. Linking literatures on just transitions and devaluation in the energy sector, we show how negotiated devaluation may offer an emerging strategy for owners of energy assets to manage decline in a changing energy landscape. The case also demonstrates the political contingency of these coalitions and the transitions they subtend, and the limited dimensions of justice that might be affirmed in them.","PeriodicalId":48432,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85857313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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