TY - JOUR
T1 - Green bond market practices
T2 - exploring the moral ‘balance’ of environmental and financial values
AU - Bracking, Sarah
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
PY - 2024/2/20
Y1 - 2024/2/20
N2 - This paper explores why and how green bond investors apply environmental and financial morality. It analyses the coproduction of environmental and financial values in green bond markets using digital ethnography, industry literature and interviews with investors during 2019–2022. It analyses how green bond investors explain and narrate their diverse market practices in the balancing of financial and ethical returns, converging in an unstable space of mutual coproduction. The calculative practices and signalling of green virtue are performed in little machines of ethical inscription but are rarely either empirically validated or explicitly discussed. The green bond universe might appear stable, but its foundations are forged in long-standing intersectional assumptions, as it relies on, and reproduces, the historical structures of racial capitalism. The market practices described here are designed to help green bonds become a mainstream asset class. However, these are reproducing older discursive tropes and growth is elusive.
AB - This paper explores why and how green bond investors apply environmental and financial morality. It analyses the coproduction of environmental and financial values in green bond markets using digital ethnography, industry literature and interviews with investors during 2019–2022. It analyses how green bond investors explain and narrate their diverse market practices in the balancing of financial and ethical returns, converging in an unstable space of mutual coproduction. The calculative practices and signalling of green virtue are performed in little machines of ethical inscription but are rarely either empirically validated or explicitly discussed. The green bond universe might appear stable, but its foundations are forged in long-standing intersectional assumptions, as it relies on, and reproduces, the historical structures of racial capitalism. The market practices described here are designed to help green bonds become a mainstream asset class. However, these are reproducing older discursive tropes and growth is elusive.
KW - green bonds, green investing, sustainable finance, green finance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85185291368&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17530350.2024.2312864
DO - 10.1080/17530350.2024.2312864
M3 - Article
SN - 1753-0350
VL - 17
SP - 279
EP - 296
JO - Journal of Cultural Economy
JF - Journal of Cultural Economy
IS - 3
M1 - 10.1080/17530350.2024.2312864
ER -