*apologies for any cross-posting!*





CALL FOR PAPERS





New Private Financing for Development: Latin America in comparative perspective





One-day conference at the Institute of Latin American Studies,

School of Advanced Study, University of London, on 23rd November 2018

Keynote speaker: Professor Benjamin Selwyn, Dept. of International Development, University of Sussex





Recent decades have seen an ideological shift in international development, from a macro-economic approach based on the implementation of structural adjustment policies, to a ‘human capabilities’ approach posited on the entrepreneurial potential of the world’s poor to create and sustain new global markets. Central to this shift is a changing role envisioned for the private sector, with corporate and financial actors now engaging directly in the design of market-based models for social impact, amidst a growing discourse on the necessity of private finance to meet the costs of development. Nation states and development NGOs are now tasked with mobilising this private finance, through diverse public-private partnerships (PPPs) and ‘blended finance’ models, across sectors including education, health, the environment and access to financial services. These trends are crystallised in the high corporate engagement seen in the design of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and widely repeated claims that private finance will be essential to meeting what UNCTAD has identified as a $2.5 trillion annual financing gap for achieving them.





As diverse new models for private financing take hold, development is increasingly financialised within the market frameworks of global capitalism, and development solutions are posited on the dual motives of social impact and financial profit making. How is the private sector’s contribution to development reconfigured through these initiatives? How are the concepts of poverty and social impact measured and defined by them? What are the impacts of these trends on development policymaking, and how is this experienced on the ground? Where do enduring issues of economic and social justice sit within this landscape? And can we envisage alternative development models in this arena, able to transcend capitalist profit-seeking priorities?





Alongside these themes, this conference will examine the tensions between local and global frameworks around private financing for development, taking Latin America – which has not been a common geography for scholarship in this area - as a regional case study within a broader comparative framework. We will also explore the influence of changing political contexts on private development finance, such as Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ and its recent ebbing as right wing political elites have reasserted their authority within the region. To these ends, this one-day conference will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars working in Latin American and beyond. We welcome contributions on (but not limited to) the following themes:







  *     Public-private partnerships (PPPs) and blended development finance

  *     Philanthropy and philanthrocapitalism

  *     Corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability

  *     Social business and Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) initiatives

  *     Impact investment, microfinance, green finance, social impact bonds and fintech for development

  *     Global value chains (GVCs), Fairtrade, cause-related marketing





Please send a 250 word abstract and a short CV to [log in to unmask], by 30th July 2018. Decisions on papers will be communicated by 1st Sept 2018. This conference is kindly funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme.





Dr Jessica Sklair

Visiting Fellow

Institute of Latin American Studies

School of Advanced Study, University of London

Senate House

Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

[log in to unmask]





########################################################################



To unsubscribe from the CARIBBEAN-STUDIES list, click the following link:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CARIBBEAN-STUDIES&A=1